


Bound Together

by Ainu, GhostFox, Sweetferret



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Multi, Occult, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 15:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 44,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7897753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ainu/pseuds/Ainu, https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostFox/pseuds/GhostFox, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sweetferret/pseuds/Sweetferret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hinata has a war to win, a prank war that is, and he isn't afraid to face otherworldly danger to do it. Yachi just hopes they both live long enough to graduate. </p><p>Or, the one where Yachi and Hinata summon Kageyama the demon to do their bidding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to SweetFerret, for editing all of my mistakes and being the best beta I could ask for, and Ainu, for her amazing ideas and convincing me to take part in this in the first place <33
> 
> Art for this fic by Ainu can be found [here.](http://ainudraws.tumblr.com/post/149616196451/hinata-has-a-war-to-win-a-prank-war-that-is-and) Enjoy!

Hour two into his homework and the formulas and equations on Hinata’s paper start to swirl and mash together, forming messy tendrils of black ink and bitter disappointment that swim around in their stark white confines. He throws an arm over his eyes and groans, letting the itching burn in his eyelids start to ebb as they slide over his tired eyes.

“Shouyou where’s your phone? I want to check if I did these derivatives right,” Yachi says from her cross legged position on the bedroom floor, blonde head not lifting from her paper.

Hinata groans again as he rolls over, letting one arm dangle off the edge of the bed as he watches the way her eyebrows furrow and tongue sticks out slightly between her lips as she concentrates.

“You know you’re gonna get wrinkles if you keep screwing up your face like that,” he jokes, brain completely giving up on math homework for the night. He’d just scribble something down tomorrow morning in class. Or, better yet, he’d just get the answers from Yachi later.

She ignores his comment, face remaining just as scrunched as before, if not more so, and sticks out her hand. “Phone, please.”

“Where’s yours?” he asks, wiggling on top of the covers until he can get his hand in his pocket and extract the device.

“It’s almost dead,” Yachi answers, looking up and nodding slightly as the warm metal hits her palm. “Thank you.”

“Mhmm,” he hums while her fingers fly over the screen, inputting the password she already knows by heart.

Hinata rolls over again, curling up on his bed and barely caring as he feels paper crumple beneath him. Maybe rolling on his homework will make the answers magically appear. You never know.

He studies the grain of the stucco on his walls; the calm atmosphere and warm air of the room making his eyes start to droop when Yachi’s voice breaks the silence. “Umm, Shouyou?”

“Hmm,” he mumbles again, trying to pull the peaceful air back to him like something tangible he could hold and keep with him.

“Why is ‘how to summon a demon’ in your search history?”

He bolts up, feeling like a jolt of electricity made its way from the top of his head to the tips of his fingers and toes in less than a second, leaving a static wake in his veins. The loudly tearing paper beneath him barely even registers in his ears.

“What!?”

She turns the phone screen towards him, purple text expanding below the Google searchbar in the center, exposing all of his secrets. Well, not _all_ of them, but definitely enough of them.

Sure enough one line reads ‘how to summon a demon’, sitting snugly between ‘how to stop peeing the bed’ and ‘how likely are you to die from summoning a demon?’. He knows the first line is no surprise to Yachi, but he’s still glad she ignores it.

Hinata’s mouth hangs open like a fish, gulping for air to liberate his frozen lungs and finding none. Yachi raises one blonde eyebrow and starts to turn the phone back around as Hinata leaps forward to snatch it away, falling from the bed in the process.

“Shouyou!” Yachi yells as he lands in her lap, grip like a vice around his phone and face burning. “What is going on with you?”

He waits for her to push him off but she doesn’t, so he just sighs and covers his face, hoping she’ll just forget about it and move on. She doesn’t.

“Shouyou?”

“What’s up?” He asks, tentatively peeking at her from between his fingers, but she just folds her arms and looks down at him; homework forgotten and determination switched from cosine derivatives to getting her questions answered.

“Why are you looking stuff like that up? Isn’t that dangerous?” There’s real concern in her eyes, peppered with stubbornness and carefully subdued curiosity.

“I was just curious?” He tries to smile but it comes out forced and suspicious.

“Shouyou…”

“Alright, alright!” He whines, throwing his arms wide and looking up with eyes as wide and innocent as he can muster. “I was reading about how to summon demons and make them do stuff for you and I… was kinda maybe thinking about trying it.”

He watches as emotions fly across Yachi’s face; first he expects her to yell, but her expression changes to one of fear and eventually derision. “I think you’ve been watching too much Black Butler.”

“What? What is that?” He asks, narrowing his eyes when her cheeks turn pink but shaking his head and getting back to what’s important. “No, Hitoka, listen. This is real. This is _important_.”

“What on earth could you need,” she pauses, leaning forward to whisper, “a _demon_ for?”  She’s obviously trying to get him to understand the gravity of the situation but to no avail.

Hinata sits up, facing her on the rug and wringing his hands in his lap. “Okay, _that’s_ not important, but trust me! I really need it!”

“Shouyou…” she sighs, eyeing him with a mixture of exasperation and pity.

“Hitoka, please! I’d have already done it by myself but I was afraid of messing up or something and I could really use your help!” He knows it’ll work; Yachi can’t resist helping people especially when they specifically ask for it. “Nothing will probably happen anyway.”

Yachi squeezes her eyes shut, visibly battling something inside of herself before letting out a long breath and looking back at him. “Show me the instructions.”

“Yes!” He yells, punching a fist into the air in excitement before pulling up the bookmarked page on his phone. **10 Easy Steps for Summoning an Obedient Demon.** “Thank you so much!”

“Are you sure this is safe?” She asks, eyeing the dark gray and red horror blog with a suspicious look. “This is just something someone posted online, Shouyou. There’s no telling if it’s real or if it’s actually ‘10 Easy Steps for Getting Yourself Murdered by Creatures from the Beyond’. I don’t know if we can trust this.”

“Don’t worry that blog has like, a million followers. It’s totally safe.”

“I don’t think…whatever. Do you have any of this stuff?” She continues scrolling through the post, worry creeping farther and farther along her features.

“Yeah! I’ve been collecting stuff here and there,” Hinata answers, digging through his drawers to obtain various candles, jars of salt, sheets of heavy looking paper, scissors, gluesticks (Yachi wasn’t sure what that was for), matches, red thread, needles, and who knows what else. He can hear Yachi gulp loudly from the other side of the room.

“This says you have to draw a summoning circle and its super dangerous if it gets smudged or broken. Where are you going to put it?” She looks around, scanning the room for something small and inconspicuous they could paint on.

“We’ll just do it here,” Hinata answers, ushering the girl up from the floor and sliding the rug all the way to the wall, leaving a clear space of hardwood floor behind. “Tada!”

“Isn’t that dangerous? You walk here all the time it can get messed up really easily.”

“Nah we’ll just put the rug back over it,” he waves away her concern, returning to his supplies on the floor.

“…Okay. Anyway, what are you going to use to draw it? You need something really durable,” Yachi says, eyes darting between the instructions and the pile of supplies with eyes growing more and more worried by the second.

“Hmm,” he hums, searching through a messy drawer at the top of his desk with his tongue between his teeth, smiling when he finds the skinny pink vile. “This! I took it out of my mom’s stuff.”

Yachi steps forward and takes it, holding up to her face to read the tiny lettering on the side of the bottle. “Smearproof liquid lipstick ultra matte finish long lasting lip paint high pigment lipstain…in the shade gossip. When has your mom ever worn this?” Her mouth forms a small ‘o’ when she looks up at him.

“I have no idea. But it’s basically just hot pink paint in a bottle. It’s perfect,” he tells her, shaking the bottle and twisting off the cap. Yachi starts to say something else behind him but he doesn’t hear her, kneeling down and pressing the thin gooey brush to the wood floor.

“..preparation..- What are you doing!?” She yells, making him jump and almost drop the vial of paint.

“What the-,” he squeaks, catching it before anything can spill and turning around to send an incredulous look Yachi’s way. “Drawing the circle! What does it look like?”

“Now!?”

“What? Yes, now!”

One hand flies to her chest, the other still clutching his phone with the instructions on the screen. “I thought we were just…just getting ready or something! I didn’t know you wanted to do this right now!”

“You’re not going to back out are you?” He asks, looking like a kicked puppy as he stands and recaps the lipstick.

“N-no,” she stutters, taking a deep breath to steady herself. “It just…caught me off guard I guess.”

“Good! No time like the present, I always say,” he beams, which only seems to make the poor girl more anxious than before. “Let me see the phone I need a reference for the circle.”

Yachi nods, handing him the phone and muttering something about him ‘never saying that once in his life’ and ‘batting those big dumb puppy dog eyes’. She pokes nervously at the paper and needles for a moment before returning to watch over his shoulder, pointing out any mistakes he makes in the drawing before eventually just taking over and finishing it herself. In the end the second half looks much neater than the first, but a summoning circle is a summoning circle. Probably.

“Just for the record I think this is a really bad idea,” Yachi says, sitting quietly on her knees as Hinata arranges candles at the five main points of the circle’s edge. “And the only reason I’m taking part in it at all is to make sure you don’t do it wrong and hurt yourself.”

“Where would I be without you?” Hinata smirks, handing her a cut strip of the heavy paper and assuming a similar position beside her. She takes it with a small frown, and he knows that despite her completely true words they’re both already in too deep to back out of this now. “Write your name on this.”

“My full name?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it matters,” he shrugs, uncapping a pen with his teeth and pressing the tip to the parchment.

With a sigh Yachi reopens the blog post, scanning for the answer to her question and shaking her head furiously when she finds it. “Do not use your full name when summoning a demon. Names are powerful and giving them the power of your full name can result in danger and even loss of control of your demon.”

“Oh. Alright then,” Hinata says, looking down at the strip of paper with his full name scrawled on it. “Guess I can’t use this one.”

Yachi picks the piece up from the floor where he tosses it and carries it to the trash can near the door, returning quickly and neatly writing her last name onto a scrap of paper. “What next?”

“We, uh, put these under the candles and then…say the magic words?”

“You’re hopeless, Shouyou,” Yachi sighs, placing each of their papers under one of the mismatched candles and looking back towards the pile of supplies. “What’s the red string for?”

“Oh! That’s for something else I read about where you invite something to possess a doll and play hide and seek with you. It seemed fun until I read some stories written by people who actually tried it and,” he pauses to shudder, “just trust me you don’t want to do it.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” she mumbles, wondering what part of that could seem fun in the first place.

“Okay, okay,” Hinata smiles, scanning the phone screen and nodding. “I was right. We’re all done except for the words. I know this part. Help me light the candles.”

They each take a match and light the candles around the perimeter of the circle, Yachi making sure they’re completely extinguished before setting them aside. “Here,” Hinata says, taking her hand in his and wrapping it around the base of the candle sitting on top of her name. “Keep your hand here until it’s over.”

“O-okay,” she stutters, her fear and discomfort showing more and more on her face; delicate features darkened by the unknown they’re delving into.

Hinata smiles at her, doing what he can to alleviate some of the tension. It seems to work.

“Ready?” He asks, not waiting for a real answer as he grabs hold of his own candle and winks. “Here goes nothing.”

The candlelight flickers ominously on the walls for a moment, casting shadows that don’t quite look like the two figures huddled on the floor but couldn’t be anything else.

Before the silence can work its way to his nerves Hinata speaks, repeating words he’d been practicing in his head for days, not sure when he’d actually put them to use. “Creature of the darkness, living on the edge of shadows, we call you here. With our names we draw power, and that power binds you to the land of the living and to our souls upon release of death or broken bond. Come now, to your masters, and take your place in the firelight.”

They wait, but nothing happens.

Yachi’s eyes are squeezed firmly shut, free hand shoved between her thighs to keep it from shaking, but after a few minutes of inactivity she slowly opens them. Hinata stares intensely at the center of the circle, willing something, _anything_ , to appear, but the space remains empty.

“Oh wow, what a shame,” she chirps, trying to hide her relief as she stands and dusts off her skirt. “I guess that’s that. Now let’s get this mess cleaned up.”

“We must have done something wrong,” Hinata whispers, looking dejectedly down at the mess of paint and burning candles before him, the hard wood floor biting into his kneecaps. He looks up at Yachi defeated, and her carefully hidden excitement starts to fade.

“Hey,” she says, kneeling back down and rubbing her friend’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it; we probably just missed something small. How about I check it over and see if I can find anything?”

“Alright,” he sniffs, rubbing the back of his fist against his nose. He’s disappointed, but he doesn’t want Yachi to know just how disappointed he really is.

She picks up the forgotten phone again and begins poring over the instructions as Hinata turns back to the pile of unused summoning supplies he’d gathered. His eyes land on the sewing needles just as Yachi speaks again.

“We forgot the blood.”

Both heads whip up at the other’s words, and a grin breaks out over Hinata’s face, met with a pale grimace from Yachi.

“I can’t believe it,” he laughs, picking up one of the needles and quickly pricking the tip of his finger and letting a drop fall onto the paper with his name on it. “We forgot such an important step.”

“How silly of us,” Yachi mutters, grabbing a different needle from the box and copying Hinata’s actions before her conscience can jump in and make her stop.

“Is that everything?”

“Yeah I think so,” she answers, setting the phone down with one last sigh and replacing her hand around the base of her candle, Hinata already gripping his and practically bouncing with excitement.

He begins the words again, and right away he can tell something is different. The air thickens, cementing them in place on the cold floor, and his voice seems to fill the small space with much more substance than before. The candle beneath his palm grows warmer by the second, seeming to almost pulsate like a heartbeat. He looks up, wondering if Yachi feels it too, but her eyes are shut tight and her breathing is shallow, so he continues. “Come now, to your masters, and take your place in the firelight.”

At first nothing happens, but disappointment doesn’t crash down on him like before. Instead he holds his breath, knowing that something is coming. And it does. The edges of their scraps of paper begin to glow orange, the color spreading until they catch fire completely, the light spreading to the hot pink circle and igniting its lines in an iridescent glow.

“Oh my god. Oh god, Hitoka, its working!” He yells, looking over the center towards his friend.

“It’s what!?” She shrieks, eyes flying open just as the candles go out, casting the entire room in pitch darkness despite the sun not having fully set yet. “Shouyou!”

“Hitok-AH,” he gasps, palm flying to his chest as something moves inside of him sending blinding white streaks of pain up behind his eyes. Something thick and heavy snakes around what feels like his heart, squeezing ever so slightly as it makes itself at home. “Oh, ah! Fuck!” He pants; sweat beading on his forehead, but the pain disappears almost as quickly as it came.

“Shouyou, where are you?” Yachi calls, her voice frantic and understandably terrified. “I can’t see a thing!”

Hinata opens his mouth to answer, but he’s stopped short by the thud of something heavy hitting the floor between them. Something solid and large, cold ebbing off of it and touching the tips of his nose. No one speaks. No one breathes, and slowly the darkness begins to dissipate like an opaque gas in the filtering light of the evening sun.

The moment the fog clears and the room recovers its normal light, Yachi lets out a squeak.

Hinata doesn’t know what he expected to see, but what stands before him is definitely not it. “Y-you look like a person,” he blurts, clapping a hand over his mouth as the figure whips its head toward him.

The figure almost seems to smile; the most terrifying display of the feature he’d ever seen but a smile nonetheless. ‘Would you like me to look less like a person?” It asks, eyes turning black and bones elongating as it seemed to stretch out before them, more dark foggy tendrils spreading out between its feet.

“No!” Hinata shouts, throwing up his hands to stop the figure from transforming any more. “No. A person is…fine,” he chuckles lightly, hoping to soften the mood.

“Why did you call me here?” It asks, returning to its previous size and narrowing its no longer black but pleasantly dark blue eyes at Hinata. He feels Yachi crawl over and latch onto his arm, burying her face in his skin and probably trying her best to completely disappear.

“W-why don’t we start with hello?” The creature narrows its eyes dangerously, but Hinata continues anyway. “I’m…I’m Hinata, and this is Yachi. We, uh, we’re your masters, I guess.” He does his best to smile politely but the word ‘master’ seems to strike a chord.

“I have no master.”

Yachi’s grip on his arms tightens, and what little bit of courage he has left manifests in his chest. “Yeah, actually, you do. But don’t worry we aren’t gonna be like, mean or anything. We just want to know your name for now.” It still doesn’t move from the center of the circle, and Hinata faintly remembers something about them having to be given permission to move freely. This knowledge adds to his confidence; just a little bit.

Yachi turns her head slightly, enough to catch its attention, and nods vigorously. “Yes we promise to be very nice and accommodating,” she squeaks, immediately returning to her hiding spot against Hinata’s arm.

The figure stays quiet for a moment, seeming to weigh its options before answering. “Kageyama, demon from the seventh circle of Hell, jailer of tortured souls, and I don’t take orders from children.”

Without a second thought Hinata bursts into laughter; Yachi’s grip becoming deathly tight as she leans back to stare at the creature, or rather, _demon_. “Kageyama? _Just_ Kageyama?” Dark smoke slowly leaks from between the demon’s legs again.

“Shouyou, shut up,” Yachi whispers, frantically shaking his arm as he continues to laugh. “Shouyou, shut up _now_!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” he wheezes, struggling to catch his breath and clutching his stomach; the demon’s face still completely rigid and expressionless. “It’s just…that’s like a typical anime villain name. It’s perfect.”

“Oh my god, ignore him!” Yachi pleads, clamping a hand down over Hinata’s mouth and turning to look up at Kageyama. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. I think you have a lovely name!”

Hinata sticks his tongue out to lick her hand and she quickly draws it away. “Damnit, Shouyou!”

“So what kind of powers do you have?” Hinata asks excitedly, looking Kageyama up and down, searching for horns or wings or a tail but finding none.

“Stop it!” She shrieks again, pouncing on him but he easily pushes her off.

“What is my purpose here?” Kageyama asks, ignoring the outburst from his two ‘masters’. “I’d like to fulfill it so you can release me.”

“We’ll get to that, don’t worry,” he replies, stepping a bit closer to the circle to get a better look. “But first-,”

“Shouyou! Hitoka!” A voice calls from the hallway, and all three freeze completely as the bedroom door is thrown open, revealing Hinata’s younger sister Natsu in the faint glow of the light from the kitchen. “Mom said dinner’s ready…what are you guys doing in here?”

“Homework!” Hinata says quickly, instinctively stepping forward to hide Kageyama behind him even though there’s no way he could ever hope to cover the demon with his small frame.

“It’s a complete mess in here, mom is gonna be so mad,” she tells them, eyes wide as they travel between her brother and the terrified Yachi still somewhere on the ground. “Hurry up before the food gets cold.” She turns and skips off, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

“Can she not…see you?” Hinata asks, turning back toward Kageyama with new curiosity in his eyes.

“I can only be seen by you two unless I choose otherwise,” he explains, obviously fed up with how his night is going so far. “I didn’t think the child needed to see me.”

“Nah, you’re right. That would’ve been bad. She’d probably have nightmares for a month.”

“Not that you’re scary or anything!” Yachi chimes, trying her best to keep tempers low and feelings unhurt. “Unless you like looking scary in which case you’re _extremely_ terrifying.”

“Are you hungry?” Hinata beams, pushing Yachi out of the way and receiving a death glare he didn’t know the small girl was capable of. “My mom is a great cook and she always makes a ton. I can like, bring you back a plate or something.”

“Human food disgusts me,” he replies immediately, not breaking eye contact.

“Then you’ve definitely never had my mom’s pork buns,” Hinata shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking around the room. “Well, we’re gonna go eat dinner. You can sit on the bed or whatever, or you can tag along if you want.”

With permission finally granted Kageyama takes a step forward, one heavy boot exiting the circle with the slightest struggle, as if walking through an invisible barrier, slowly followed by the other. “I cannot stray too far away from either of you at once,” he says, and Hinata gulps a bit too loud as the demon steps close to him, towering over his measly 163cm.

“W-well okay then,” he stammers, looking up and meeting those cold blue eyes with his own. “The dining room is this way.” He grabs Yachi’s hand and they shuffle down the hallway trying to look as normal as possible with Kageyama trailing silently behind them.

Hinata’s mom is her usual smiling self, dishing out food onto plates around the table and asking about school or homework. He and Yachi do their best to keep their eyes from darting to the edge of the table where Kageyama sits rail straight in one of the empty chairs, unbeknownst to the other two members of the house.

“Hitoka, sweetie, you look so pale. Are you feeling well?” She asks, searching the girl she basically considers a second daughter for any signs of illness.

“Huh? Oh, yes! I feel fine!” Yachi squeaks, forcing a smile and shoveling a bite of rice into her mouth to prove it.

“We just had a long day, Mom,” Hinata adds through a bite of pork bun. “You know, calculus and all that. We’ve been studying a ton for exams.”

“It’s nice to see you both working so hard but make sure to take care of yourselves, okay?” She smiles warmly, spooning more food onto Yachi’s plate.

“Hitoka works hard; Shouyou just copies her homework,” Natsu says, sticking her tongue out at her older brother across the table.

Kageyama narrows his eyes at the young girl as if she poses some sort of threat to his master. Hinata stands up suddenly, slamming his knees into the table and knocking over the water pitcher. 

“Shouyou!”

“Sorry, Mom! But I didn’t realize how late it was and Hitoka has to get home soon! I should walk her,” he rambles, grabbing Yachi’s hand and pulling her down the hall and back to his room, making sure to nod his head at Kageyama to signal for him to follow.

“Shouyou, what the hell?” Yachi yells when he slams the door closed but he ignores her, whirling around to face the demon.

“Natsu is off limits! I don’t care if she has a knife to my throat you can NOT touch her. EVER,” he declares, as close to Kageyama’s face as he can get, fear being overshadowed by fierce protectiveness.

“I made no threat to the child,” he replies coldly.

“Don’t even look at her,” Hinata adds, folding his arms and letting out a deep breath.

“As you wish, _master_ ,” the demon jeers.

“Good. I do wish,” he says; resolve starting to fade and losing a bit of strength in his legs. “Alright, let’s get you home, Hitoka.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay,” she asks, gathering her bag and shuffling close to whisper. “Alone? With him?”

“We’ll be fine,” he answers, waving away her concern. “By this time tomorrow we’ll be best friends. I can already tell.”

“If you say so,” she sighs, and the three make their way outside.

Hinata must admit that walking the city at night feels much safer with a demon accompanying you. Even though he’s invisible Hinata feels secure with what almost feels like an invisible bodyguard trailing him.

They don’t talk much on their walk, but when they reach her house Yachi begins blurting out anything she can remember about safety when dealing with the occult she had read earlier. Hinata thanks her, not listening to anything she says, and waves as she reluctantly heads inside.

Excitement starts to bubble up inside of him as they turn to make their way back.

“Okay, ready to hear why we called you here?” Hinata asks, finally addressing his companion.

“I’d like to finish it as soon as possible,” Kageyama replies, ears seeming to actually perk up at the prospect of release.

“Me too, buddy,” he nods, clapping his hands together and smiling. “This is gonna be great. So, there’s this super annoying kid at school, Terushima, and he’s always pulling these stupid pranks on me. Like the other day! He put ketchup packets under the legs of my chair so it made a huge mess when I sat down. It got _everywhere_. I hate that guy.”

“And you need me to dispose of him?” Kageyama asks, eyes darkening and lips curling slightly at the edges.

“What? No! No, nothing like that!” Hinata sputters, throwing his hands up. “I just need you to help me get him back!”

“Let me get this straight,” Kageyama says, stopping on the sidewalk and sounding the most casual and… _human_ that Hinata had heard all night. “You summoned me here to help you win a prank war?”

“…Yes.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I know it sounds silly, but trust me, this is no simple prank war. Terushima is on a whole other level. I need all the help I can get,” Hinata pleads; trying the puppy dog look he knows always works on Yachi.

“Otherworldly help?” Kageyama deadpans, seemingly unfazed by Hinata’s attempts to look cute.

“Well, yeah! You’ll have fun I promise,” he says, resuming his walk down the sidewalk until the demon has to follow. “It’s gonna be great.”

Kageyama lets out a heavy sigh but doesn’t speak again until they’re back in Hinata’s bedroom, the only sound being the various scraping of drawers as he puts things away and pulls the rug back over the abandoned circle on the floor.

“I despise humans and your minuscule problems,” he huffs, falling onto the bed just like Hinata does himself after a particularly long day.

Hinata does his best to hide the smile spreading on his face, but his cheeks stretch wide anyway.

“That’s the spirit, buddy.”


	2. Chapter 2

Humans, in Kageyama’s opinion, were rather unsanitary. Especially teenage boys. Especially _this teenage boy in particular_. That was a safer assumption, since Kageyama was sure the piles of dirty clothes and forgotten apple cores on the desk that looked to have had something sticky spilled on the surface and never wiped up, could not be commonplace and assuming so would be unfair.

He almost wished he had gone home with the girl instead; her room probably smelled much nicer. But still, he didn’t want to give any kind of humans too much credit.

That being said, she definitely looked more put together than Hinata when she showed up on his doorstep the next morning; hair neatly brushed and pulled back, and uniform freshly pressed and clean.

Though, anything would look better than the wrinkled uniform shirt the boy had pulled out from under his pillow and the pants he found wadded up in his desk chair. Kageyama wasn’t sure if he had brushed his hair at all since he had elected to sit awkwardly against the bathroom door in the hallway instead of following him inside.

Hinata had tried talking to him all morning, skipping between pleasantries and trying to pick a fight, looking for any response whatsoever, but Kageyama had mostly ignored him.

Being here again, in the human world with its quickly sketched edges and perishable residents, was jarring. No matter how much time he spent away from it, trying to forget, he never could’ve prepared for the feeling of returning. His lungs were not used to the brisk oxygen and his eyes unready for the view of the trees and the sunrise and even the disheveled mess Hinata calls a bedroom. It was overwhelming and he was still unsure of how he felt about it. So instead of talking he just watched.

The two friends were very mismatched, he thought as he followed them to the school; dragging his boots along the pavement and leaving untraceable scuff marks to blend in with the rest of the anonymous blemishes that attach life to the cold gray surfaces. The girl, Yachi, was so careful. She looked both ways as they crossed the street and stepped over beetles making their way to the bushes on their sides, her steps purposeful in the way they land, making sure to hold solid where she wants them. Now Hinata, wild messy Hinata, would probably be dead without her. He moved constantly forward, loud and boisterous, never looking any direction but ahead. No planning and no concern for what might happen next.

I wasn’t just that, though. Not just their differences in demeanor or organization, not just the way their outsides were like the pieces to two different jigsaw pieces. It was their souls. Deep down, past their clothes and past their organs, and past the atoms holding them together as one whole, they were so dissimilar. Kageyama didn’t really know how to explain it.

Like geodes, or vending machine bubble gum. Never what you expect to find when you open it up and take a bite. But, you don’t eat geodes. He would have to work on that analogy.

An intense feeling of dread washes over Kageyama, like cold rain punctuated with a budding sense of sharp indignation. He looks up just as he almost walks into Hinata’s back, finding the boy stopped just in front of the school gate, the feeling practically dripping off of him like the droplets Kageyama feels tickling his fingertips.

“Shouyou?” Yachi stops too, turning to her friend with concern that he doesn’t feel as strongly as Hinata’s dread. “Why’d you stop? We’ll be late. Is everything-,”

“Hitokaaaaaaa!”

Her head snaps up, following the sound of her name on the wind up to a window on the side of the school building where a blond boy is hanging halfway out of it and waving wildly in their direction.

“Yuuji!” She squeaks, a hand flying to her mouth as she watches the boy dangle several stories from the ground. Hinata sighs and rolls his eyes. “Get out of the window!”

“Good morning, Hitoka! You look lovely this morning! Like the first light of sunrise touching the petals of-, wait!”

 A dark haired woman appears behind him, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and dragging him back into the room. The sound of muffled arguing still floats down to them followed by the sound of something heavy slamming onto what was probably a desk. The chattering voices stops after that.

“Come on,” Hinata growls, grabbing Yachi by the hand and pulling her behind him as he continues up the path to the school building, dread fading to something stronger.

The wash of rain turns into something hot that tingles in Kageyama’s palms. Jealousy? Anger? He can’t tell exactly, but it’s something along those lines.

That must have been the boy Hinata had called Terushima. Slowly things begin to make more sense, but they have yet to become less petty. They make their way up to the third floor without speaking, Yachi following Hinata with an expression that suggests this sort of behavior is normal from him.

The blonde boy is waiting for them when they slip into one of the open classrooms, his grin wide and almost predatory, faltering slightly when his eyes drop down to where the two still have their hands clasped together. Hinata lets go quickly, and Yachi smiles so subtly Kageyama is sure he’s the only one to see it.

“Yachi, Hinata, please take your seats. If you’re quick and silent I’ll excuse your tardiness,” the woman at the front of the class says, voice stern but eyes flat. Kageyama recognizes her as the woman who pulled the blonde boy back through the window.

“Yes, Miss Kiyoko!” They bow and scramble to their seats; Hinata one desk behind Terushima and Yachi one to the right of him.

Being near the back Hinata is surrounded by a few empty desks and Kageyama sits down awkwardly at one, feeling foolish but otherwise indifferent. Hinata shoots him a concerned look, probably wondering why he won’t speak, but turns back around as the teacher begins her lecture.

Kageyama can feel Hinata’s levels of annoyance rise slowly throughout the class as Terushima makes himself as irritating as possible, constantly leaning back in his chair and making Hinata’s desk rise off the floor; causing his pencil to roll down the slope and clatter on the tiles loudly in the mostly silent room. Or casually slipping notes onto Yachi’s desk when Miss Kiyoko has her back turned to the aisle.

Yachi ignores the papers piling up to her side, but Hinata does not have the same sense of patience.

“Can you quit it?” He whispers, much louder than the volume of a normal whisper.

“Stop what?” The other boy whispers back.

“Stop pushing my damn desk!”

“Oh, was I? Sorry, man,” Terushima replies, sitting forward suddenly and letting Hinata’s desk slam to the floor, ducking as the teacher whirls around.

“Hinata, is there a problem back there?” Something flickering in her slate gray eyes makes Kageyama believe that she is not in the business of fixing problems.

“No ma’am,” he answers, eyes down to avoid the daggers in hers.

“I don’t want any more disruptions from back there, understand?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And, Terushima, you’d better stop your snickering. You aren’t off the hook either.” The boy shuts up immediately, mouth snapping shut with an echoing click of teeth.

Kageyama can’t help but smirk a bit. He likes this teacher woman, and Hinata was right; this kid is supremely infuriating.

Classes continue on rather uneventfully, Miss Kiyoko finishing her lecture on Japanese involvement in World War II and switching out with another teacher who begins writing various symbols and wavy lines on the chalkboard.

When the teacher, addressed as Mr Sugawara, asks for their homework, Hinata groans and pulls a ripped piece of paper from his bag. After handing it forward, he drops his head down onto his desk. Yachi shoots him a sympathetic look but he just shrugs, pulling out a notebook and proceeding to furiously write notes for the rest of the period, though none of them seem to match up with anything the teacher explains.

An hour later, when all of the student’s eyes are glossed over and half have given up and slumped forward, the class ends, and, thankfully, its lunchtime. As the teacher’s silver hair disappears through the doorway the students slowly begin to talk amongst themselves and Terushima spins around to grin at Hinata.

Yachi sighs and shoots Kageyama a soft yet tentative smile before turning to them; the complete lack of fright in her eyes catching him off guard.

“Hey what’re you working on?” Terushima asks, pulling Hinata’s notebook towards him.

“Nothing! Mind your business,” Hinata bites, practically leaping from his seat to shield the pages from the other boy’s view and tossing it quickly into his bag.

“Woah, geez. Sorry, I didn’t know it was your diary,” he teases, wagging his eyebrows.

“Shut the-,”

“Hey, Shouyou,” another boys says, walking up to the group and sitting in the empty seat on Hinata’s other side.

Kageyama swears the boy makes direct eye contact with him for a moment, his cat like pupils dilating ever so slightly, but he just blinks and turns away, pushing back a piece of his multicolored hair.

“Oh hey, Kenma,” Hinata replies, forgetting Terushima and beaming at the boy.

Kageyama can feel a flood of warmth in the pit of his stomach, a signal of friendship between the two.

Bored with the new development, Terushima turns to Yachi, his sly grin widening with more of a genuine edge. “Wanna go get lunch with me?”

Yachi shifts uncomfortably, reaching into her bag and pulling out two neatly wrapped lunchboxes. “Sorry, Yuuji, I brought food from home today.”

“Awww, Hitoka, you shouldn’t have,” he smiles, pointing at one of the boxes. “Did you make one for me?”

“Oh, uh, no,” she bites her lip, “this is Shouyou’s.”

At the sound of his name Hinata’s head whips around so fast Kageyama is surprised it doesn’t pop off. “What?”

“I brought your lunch,” she answers, cheeks turning pink as she hands him the box.

“Oh! Thanks!”

Terushima’s expression turns so sour it could probably wilt the blossoms budding on the trees outside, and Kageyama understands.

Yachi’s blush, Terushima’s self-fueled rivalry, and Hinata’s clueless retaliations; they’re all so obvious with their feelings. But, what else is there to expect from adolescent humans? It’s all so cliché and so… so _dull_. It was Kageyama’s turn to be angry, his turn for smoke to tickle his palms and heat to prick inside his chest.

He was brought here, by a child, no, _two children_ , to take part in a stupid immature love triangle between three people who can’t even realize the situation they’re in. Never in his life has he been so insulted, so completely disgusted with the turn of events that brought him here. He’s a _demon_ for fuck’s sake, brought straight from the depths of hell and dropped into some sappy teen romance novel.

Hinata visibly shudders, feeling the swirling emotions in his stomach as much as Kageyama is feeling them, the other students turning to him with looks of confusion on their insignificant faces. Kenma opens his mouth to speak but is cut short by two more boys stepping up to the small group.

“Are you heading down to the cafeteria, Terushima? I’ll come with you,” the shorter of the two asks, a goofy smile on his freckled face and cowlick bobbing above his head.

Terushima blinks, his darkened look disappearing as quickly as it came and jumping up to wrap an arm around the boys neck. “Yamaguchi! Yeah, let’s go. I wanted to talk you about something anyway.”

Yamaguchi turns back to the taller boy as they start to walk away. “You coming, Tsukki?”

“No,” the other deadpans, watching the two shrug and make their way to the door. Hinata visibly relaxes with Terushima out of the room, but goes rigid again as the tall boy approaches the desk Kageyama is sitting at.

“Tsukishima!” He yells, standing up suddenly and making his other friends jump at the noise.

Tsukishima stops just in front of Kageyama, seconds away from sitting and finding an invisible human shaped figure already occupying it. “What?”

“Uh,” he starts, worrying at his bottom lip as gears visibly turn in his head. “Why don’t you sit next to me today?”

The room goes silent, other students watching silently from their own circles of friends, Kenma seeming indifferent except for the curious glint in his amber eyes, and Yachi looking as if her heart could stop beating at any moment. Kageyama’s stomach twists in nervous knots, reflecting how Hinata feels and keeping him completely frozen in his seat.

“No, I think I’ll be okay right here,” Tsukishima replies, doom crossing Hinata’s face, but the boy just leans against the side of the desk instead of sitting down, stretching out his lanky limbs. He rolls his eyes as Hinata let’s out the breath he was holding but is otherwise none the wiser to what caused the outburst.

Just to be safe Kageyama gets up and slips to the back of the room, slumping against the cabinet and resting his head against the cold wood. A smart move, he realizes, as Terushima and Yamaguchi return, Yamaguchi taking the empty seat he had just been in.

Kageyama’s anger has subsided, no longer eating at his insides but instead calmly simmering on the back burner of his mind.

“I’m telling you, it’s true!” Yamaguchi says, gesturing wildly as he retells some story from the night before, tuna sandwich left forgotten on his plastic tray. “I woke up and there was someone in my room but when I turned on the flashlight on my phone they were gone! And not only that, my pile of manga was knocked over.”

“It was probably just your cat,” Tsukishima replies, rolling his eyes and taking a chip from Yamaguchi’s tray.

“It was too big to be Caterpillar,” he shakes his head pushing the rest of his chips toward his friend. “Besides, my door was closed.”

“Maybe you were dreaming,” Yachi chimes in, seeming more to be trying to convince herself than the other boy.

“I wish, but I doubt it.”

“Hey why are you guys trying to disprove it? We could totally sell this story and get rich,” Terushima says, leaning forward and grinning eagerly. “We can get some of that ghost hunting equipment and set it up in Yamaguchi’s house and then put the videos on YouTube!”

“No one gets rich on YouTube,” Tsukishima scoffs, finishing off the chips.

“Besides, how are you going to catch ghosts on film when ghosts aren’t even real?” Hinata asks, glancing quickly towards Kageyama at the back of the room and mouthing ‘Right?’

Kageyama just shrugs, watching Hinata swallow hard before turning back to the conversation.

“I don’t think my mom would like it if we set a bunch of cameras up in my house,” Yamaguchi says, tugging at the collar of his uniform shirt.

“We won’t tell her!” Terushima pulls out a scrap of paper and hands it to Yamaguchi with a pencil. “Here, sketch out a basic floor plan of your house and we’ll go from there.”

“I’m pretty sure someone would notice camera’s set up in their house,” Kenma mutters, barely paying attention to the conversation over the top of his phone but apparently getting the important parts.

“Yuuji, you’re going to get him in trouble,” Yachi chides, gently putting a hand on his arm. The boy jolts at her touch and Kageyama rolls his eyes, his own irritation mixing with Hinata’s.

“How are you going to get ghost catching equipment anyway?” Hinata asks, folding his arms and leaning back. “It has to be expensive.”

“Don’t worry about that part,” he winks. “We’ll make the money back in no time.”

“You forgot the linen closet in the hallway,” Tsukishima mumbles, pointing down at the paper Yamaguchi is doodling on.

“Oh, right.” He flips the pencil over to the eraser side and fixes his mistake, tongue hanging slightly between his lips.

Kageyama’s legs ache, cramping from sitting still for so long. He has no idea how these kids do it; sitting at these desks day after day, learning the same mundane and useless lessons over and over for years until finally they’re free to live a life that they’re wholly unprepared for. Calculus doesn’t matter when you don’t know how to fill out a tax form. It’s a wonder how long the human race has survived for with how little they know about themselves and their general lack of preparation for anything they face over their short lifetimes.

He’s bored, longing to move, mind bristling with the prospect of doing this again for an indefinite number of days to come. The air is thick and stifling, surrounding him with the knowledge of just how helpless and just how trapped he really is. No control over his own freedom, no control over his own feelings, no control over how fucking far he can even walk on his own. He’d been through this before, definitely, but never has he felt so hopeless, and never has he had to sit in a fucking school desk.

Hinata must sense his mood; he must be able to tell that Kageyama is seconds away from suffocating because he stands up suddenly and pushes his chair back. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Thanks for the news report,” Terushima says, casually scooting his chair closer to Yachi’s.

Hinata ignores him and steps carefully around the other students so Kageyama can follow without bumping into anyone. The demon looks back just before they leave the room, barely catching Terushima sticking his tongue out at Hinata’s back as he puts an arm on Yachi’s shoulder; a flash of silver glinting from his tongue ring matching the self satisfaction in his eyes. Kageyama follows Hinata’s example and ignores him, just glad to be moving again, the air of the hallway like sweet salvation against his overheating brain.

Hinata doesn’t speak until they’re in the bathroom and he’s sure no one is hiding out in the stalls, a level of caution Kageyama didn’t know he was capable of. After concluding that the coast is clear and they aren’t in danger of someone barging in, he turns and leans against the green tile wall, folding his arms and looking up at the demon. “You okay?”

“What?”

“Are you okay?” He asks again, tilting his head slightly.

“I’m fine,” he sighs, not wanting to sit and talk about his feelings in a public school bathroom with his ‘master’.

“I don’t know what it is, or why, but I can tell what you’re feeling every once in a while,” Hinata continues, ignoring Kageyama’s attempts at silence. “I’m sure you can feel mine too. Back there you felt…frantic.”

“Just fucking pee already so we can go back,” Kageyama bites, feigning resolve no matter how futile the action.

“It felt like a panic attack. That’s the best way I can describe it. I used to have them in middle school when I was bullied a lot. That was before I met Hitoka,” he rambles, turning red when he realizes he’s gotten off subject. “A-anyway, look, I know you’re…not human, and I’m just some dumbass kid to you, and that this situation totally sucks on your end, but it doesn’t have to. We can, I don’t know, be _friends_ , if you want.”

“Friends?” He raises an eyebrow at the boy, wondering if he actually understands what he’s saying.

“Yeah, friends. It’s my fault you’re here, and I know that my problems and my world must seem so small to you, so much that I probably can’t even fully comprehend it, so the least I can do is help you enjoy your time here.” He pauses, shifting nervously before continuing. “I didn’t really know what I was getting into, I definitely didn’t expect you to have feelings, and I’m sorry about that. I’d release you, I really would, but I honestly need your help. You saw Terushima! He’s such an ass.”

Kageyama kicks at the grimy floor, contemplating Hinata’s words before mumbling, “He’s insufferable, yes, but I don’t think it’s anything you can’t handle on your own.”

“Oh he’s been pretty tame today, which is suspicious, but I’m not questioning it. Just wait, he’ll do something soon. That’s why I need you; the sooner we put him in his place the sooner you can head home. So what do you say,” he extends his hand, smile crooked but oddly endearing. “Friends?”

Kageyama just looks at the boy’s open palm, weighing his options. Befriending a human is probably the last thing he wants to do, but being miserable here isn’t a great option either. And there’s something about Hinata’s hand, sitting there between them in the dimly lit bathroom, that seems so warm, so inviting. Hinata must sense his ambivalence mixed with a slight longing to accept because his smile widens even farther as Kageyama narrows his eyes.

“I’ll think about it,” he answers, and Hinata pulls his hand back.

“That’s good enough for me,” he chirps, practically beaming, and Kageyama realizes that Hinata is much smarter than he appears, at least on an emotional level. He may not be a great student, or have the best common sense, but he understands people. He understands feelings, and that’s an impressive skill. “Let’s head back, lunch is almost over.”

“Alright.”

The way back from the bathroom feels so much different than the way to it did. This time Kageyama feels less like he’s following Hinata and more like he’s accompanying him. He doesn’t feel as trapped, and he almost convinces himself that he’s just another student walking the halls. Just another human existing in a world they were meant to be in. It feels good.

He almost let’s himself smile, Hinata’s relaxed demeanor spreading to him like warmth through the thin space between them, but as he pushes open the classroom door multiple things happen at once.

First, Hinata’s eyebrows knit together in confusion as he feels the heft of the door, noticing it is much heavier than before, and looking straight up to find the source of the weight, only to be showered in a viscous downpour of amber liquid with an oddly shimmering quality. Next, the eruption of sounds from students inside the room; a mixture of laughter, gasps, and the shout of his name from Yachi who is being gently restrained by another student, the roar of their voices stretching the seconds out so thin they almost waver between realities. And lastly, the heavy bucket sitting atop the door rolling across the top of its makeshift shelf and falling straight down on the same path of its contents; straight for Hinata’s face.

Kageyama watches it happen, almost frozen as the bucket inches closer and closer to the boy’s head, gaining speed the entire way down, and before he can stop himself he reaches out and shove’s Hinata forward. He stumbles but does not fall, jumping as metal collides with the linoleum floor behind him. The sound is gone as quickly as it came, and the students just stare through the almost tangible silence, too much having happened for their brains to fully comprehend. Shit, it’s even too much for Kageyama to comprehend.

Hinata is the only one to move, wiping what appears to be maple syrup and glitter from his eyes and flicking it to the ground, mouth agape and anger rising. “TERUSHIMA! I’M GONNA FU-,”

“Oh ho ho, what’s going on here?” A man steps up behind them, moving to place a hand on Hinata’s shoulder but thinking better of it when he sees how sticky it is. “Hinata?”

“Bokuto!”

The students all scramble to their desks as the man fully enters the room, doing his best to avoid stepping in the puddle of maple syrup. “Who’s responsible for this?” He asks, raising his ridiculously thick eyebrows at the class.

Nobody speaks at first, all holding their breath as they wait for the metaphorical hammer to drop, but after a full minute of silence Terushima stands up. “It was m-me, sir.”

Bokuto shoots him a stern look before bursting into laughter, slamming his fist against the desk at the front of the room. “Really? Wow, that was great, Terushima. A true masterpiece.”

“S-sir?” Terushima stammers, looking around the room to find equally surprised and confused expressions from his classmates.

“Get it cleaned up and I won’t give you extra homework,” he says, wiping a tear from his eye and he picks up a piece of chalk and turns to the board. “You kids keep me young. What a hoot.”

“Yes, sir!” Terushima grins, relieved to avoid trouble and quick to accept the offer. He winks at Hinata as he bends down to grab the bucket, leaning in to whisper quickly, “You’ve got a little something on your face.”

Hot anger bubbles inside Kageyama, a mix of his own and Hinata’s, as the boy turns and stalks out of the classroom, down the hall to grab his gym clothes from his locker and back into the bathroom they just came from.

Hinata’s anger is like a bubble of lava, stewing in the pit of his stomach. Simmering anger that cannot be immediately acted upon. It’s anger from humiliation and the need for revenge. It seeps from his pores as he scrubs his sticky clothes in the small sink.

Kageyama’s anger, however, is like a white hot branding iron to the chest. Anger at the ‘what if’ of the situation. What if he had not been there? What if he had been too slow? That heavy bucket would have fallen straight onto Hinata’s head and there would have been nothing anyone could have done. What if Hinata had not been pushed, and what if someone saw that he had? He hates the idea of it, and he hates Terushima for failing to understand just how fragile human life is. But mostly, he thinks, he hates himself for caring so much.

“Damn son of a bitch,” Hinata mumbles, trying to fit his head under the faucet to rinse the sugary glitter mess from his bright hair. “I knew he was planning something big, but _fuck_!”

“Hinata.”

“This goes so much farther than anything he’s done before,”

“Hinata.”

“What the hell was he think-,”

“Hinata!”

The boy whirls around as Kageyama’s voice bounces off of the tiles and back at them, his eyes wide. “Yeah?”

“I want to accept your offer.”

“Wait, what?” He asks, looking at Kageyama as if he just spouted a whole other language.

“Your offer of friendship. I accept,” he explains, and Hinata’s eyebrows raise farther than he thought possible. “I want to be friends and I want to put that little shit in his place.”

Hinata is silent for a moment, staring straight at Kageyama before breaking out into a massive grin and flinging himself forward to grab the demon’s hand and shake it. “Yes! Thank you! You won’t regret it. We’re going to get him so _good_.”

Forgetting his moist and sticky hair and clothes Hinata launches into the various ideas he’s had cooking up, practically giddy at the thought of executing them.

Kageyama nods along, half listening and half just feeling the boy’s excitement course through his veins. Yes, they were going to get Terushima good, and maybe, if he was lucky, he’d actually enjoy himself.


	3. Chapter 3

Lying in her bed that Sunday morning Yachi wonders if the entire past week could have possible been some intensely realistic and terrifying fever dream. There’s something about late mornings that throws everything into perspective; some unspoken feeling of reality to it that doesn’t quite permeate the edges of the rest of life. As if in that moment you are truly alive, and the rest is just some sort of fabrication. It’s a comforting feeling after everything that had happened, her first sane moment in days. And why shouldn’t she question the reality of it all? The whole thing was so…so _silly_ , and she’s sure she must have made most of it up.

After having breakfast with her parents Yachi changes into her favorite yellow sundress and heads out, claiming that she and Hinata have some school project that needs finishing. Her walk is calm and pleasantly warm, and with every tap of her shoes against the pavement she decides more and more that Kageyama the demon was just an elaborate daydream she had let go too far.

By the time she reaches the Hinata residence she’s practically glowing. “Good morning!” She beams when Hinata’s mother answers the door, still in her pajamas with a fleece clad Natsu hanging onto her leg. “Is Shouyou awake?”

“You’re here early, Hitoka,” she replies, Yachi’s bright smile contagious. “Yes I think so. I heard some banging around in his room earlier. Have you had breakfast yet?”

“Yes ma’am,” she nods, following the woman inside and kneeling down to pat Natsu on the head. “Morning!”

“It’s too early to be this happy,” Natsu says, mouth a flat line and hair sticking out at all angles.

“It’s almost 10AM, Natsu,” her mother sighs, looking down at them.

“Too early,” the little girl repeats with a yawn, turning to head into the kitchen and hop onto one of the chairs, leaning her forehead against the wood.

“I’m making pancakes if you want any, Hitoka,” Hinata’s mother tells her, following her daughter into the kitchen.

“Okay, thank you,” Yachi says, turning the opposite direction and heading down the hallway to Hinata’s bedroom.

She hears movement inside but has to knock twice before a chipper ‘come in!’ answers her.

She takes a deep breath before gripping the doorknob, her hand clammier than expected and heart racing much too fast. Before putting more thought into it she twists her wrist, swinging the door open to reveal a mostly empty room. Hinata sits cross legged on his bed, turning to face her as she walks in, and from what she can tell, he’s alone.

“Hey, Hitoka! Isn’t it a bit early?” He cocks his head to the side with the question but smiles nonetheless. “What’s up?”

“Uh, nothing,” she mumbles, moving farther into the room and shutting the door behind her. “Just wanted to hang out I guess.”

“Oh! Have you done that essay for Sawamura’s class? I wrote like a page or so but it’s complete garbage,” he tells her, hopping off the bed and fishing a notebook out of his bag.

Yachi nervously glances around the room, looking for any signs of Kageyama but finding none. Maybe he really was in her imagination after all. She relaxes, taking the notebook from Hinata and looking over his chicken scratch scrawl with a fond smile.

“You’re only addressing half the prompt,” she says, pointing at his introductory paragraph and pulling a red pen from her bag on the floor. “He asked for-,”

The thud of heavy boots slams into the floor just in front of them, and Yachi jumps so hard she practically throws the notebook across the room. “Here’s your godamn clarinet.”

“Awesome!” Hinata stands up and takes the dusty box from Kageyama, essay completely forgotten. “I didn’t know if it was still- Hitoka stop screaming it’s just Kageyama- if it was still up there.”

“Well it was, and it was under like twelve other boxes. How did you fit that much junk up there?” The demon asks, eyeing the clarinet like it was his long lost archenemy.

“Where were you!?” Yachi yells, hand still over her rapidly beating heart.

So much for her dreamlike calm. So much for her imagined life devoid of occult shenanigans. A girl can dream. She was surprised no one had come to see what all the commotion was about with the screaming and thudding, but it was probably for the best.

“Top of the closet,” Kageyama answers nonchalantly, pointing his thumb behind him as if being in the top of a closet was the most natural thing on earth.

“He was digging around for my clarinet. Turns out he’s great and getting up in places I can’t reach,” Hinata shrugs, pulling the instrument out of its case and checking it over. “You got anything you need found?”

“What? No,” she balks; rubbing at her temples where she can feel a headache blossoming. “Shouyou do you even play the clarinet? What do you need that thing for?”

“I used to. I just want to put it on my desk,” he tells her, setting the instrument up on its stand. “It makes me look more sophisticated.”

“But nobody ever comes in here except you two,” Kageyama deadpans and, if Yachi isn’t mistaken, tries to hide a smirk.

“Shut up!”

The two start to bicker and Yachi has to sit down, everything just a little too overwhelming for her. Even when she had convinced herself it was all fake there was a part of her that knew she was wrong, and yet it wasn’t until now, with Kageyama and Hinata standing before her bickering like old schoolmates in the same place they had first laid eyes on each other that it really sinks in. Kageyama is very real, and very _large_ , and while they weren’t acting like it they were both in very serious danger.

“What kind of girl would be interested in hearing me play clarinet in my bedroom anyway? It’s just for show,” Hinata sighs impatiently, the conversation somewhere else entirely than where Yachi left it.

“First of all, in the event they did ask you’d look like an idiot and second, as if you’d ever get a girl in here anyway. This place is disgusting,” Kageyama returns, crossing his arms.

“There’s a girl in here right now!” Hinata yells, pointing over to Yachi.

Caught off guard her face flares up what must be an embarrassing shade of scarlet. “I…uh,” she mumbles nervously, but neither of them pays any attention to her.

“Yachi is here by obligation. Besides, she knows it’s disgusting in here too,” Kageyama rolls his eyes, turning to her suddenly, navy blue eyes flashing dangerously. “Don’t you?”

“W-well, it’s uh, it’s a little messy I guess,” she stutters, trying to smile and jumping when her foot lands on an empty bag of Doritos, the crunching sound surprisingly loud. She can feel sweat starting to bead on her forehead.

“Then fucking clean it!”

“What?”

“Clean my room,” Hinata repeats, folding his arms and standing firm despite his several inches of height difference with Kageyama. “And then you can fold my laundry, and write my essay, and at dinner you can blow on my soup if it’s too hot.”

“Shouyou, quit it,” Yachi warns, shifting uncomfortably under Kageyama’s hardening gaze.

“If you want to complain so much then start fixing things your damn self. I’m your master, right? Maybe I should start acting like it.”

“Shouyou, stop!” Yachi yells, standing up and stepping between them. She knows Hinata isn’t completely serious but she doesn’t like the look of the black smoke spilling out from Kageyama’s clenched fists. “Apologize!”

“Why should I-,”

“Do it!”

He sighs but obliges, looking just past Kageyama as he does so. “I’m sorry.”

“I fucking hate you,” Kageyama replies, letting the tension fall from his shoulders.

“I hate you too,” Hinata beams.

Yachi doesn’t understand it at all, and frankly she’s still terrified, but apparently crisis averted.

With a sigh Kageyama turns around and falls into the desk chair, fiddling with the portable radio, trying to get something to come in clearly. An array of morning talk shows that sound like they’re all hosted by the same quirky duo fill the silence, and Yachi takes the opportunity to pull Hinata close while Kageyama is distracted. She picks the forgotten notebook up from the ground and opens it in front of their faces. Hinata raises an eyebrow at her, but shrugs and leans in.

“What’s up?”

“You need to be more careful,” she whispers, quietly insistent.

“Careful with what?” He asks, leaning in closer and causing Yachi to gulp.

“With Kageyama,” she replies, pushing away the flush rising to her cheeks and standing strong.”You can’t treat him like that, it’s dangerous.”

“Nah,” he scoffs, shaking his head. “Its fine we were just kidding. Kageyama isn’t dangerous.”

“He’s a demon, Shouyou,” she insists, as loudly as she can while keeping their cover. “Everything about him is dangerous.”

“Listen, Hitoka,” Hinata sighs, putting both hands on her shoulder and looking down at her, amber eyes flickering. “You don’t know him like I do. It’s all fine. Besides, he can’t hurt either of us without hurting himself. It’s part of the bond.”

His words hit her unexpectedly hard. She doesn’t know him like Hinata does? No, she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. But what about the other way around? Does Hinata think Kageyama knows him better than she does? She is hit with an overwhelming sense of jealousy, slimy and gelatinous as it slips down her throat and settles in the pit of her stomach.

Kageyama wasn’t there when Hinata was friendless and depressed their first year of high school. He wasn’t the one who pushed aside his own fear of social iteration to comfort the lonely boy who spoke too loud and got on too many nerves. Kageyama wasn’t the one who sat up on Skype until 3am trying to help Hinata study for a math test. He wasn’t the one who was trusted with whispered secrets and treated like another member of the household. Kageyama wasn’t the one that lo-, no. _No_ , she tells herself. This is an ugly way of thinking. The jealousy starts to nauseate her from how heavily it settles.

If Hinata and Kageyama wanted to be friends then that was fine. It was good, even. Hinata could use more friends. And he definitely seemed to care about Kageyama a lot in such a short time.

The emotion in her stomach turns to something colder, something more melancholic, and when she meets Kageyama’s eyes across the room they only linger for a second before the both of them turn away, but in that moment she swears she can see something stiff and calculating in his indigo irises, something almost… understanding.

“Hey, Hitoka, check this out!” Hinata says suddenly, bounding up from the bed and pulling another notebook from one of his desk drawers, completely oblivious to the mix of emotions that have seeped into the air of the room. “Kageyama and I worked on this all night.”

“You didn’t sleep?” She asks worriedly as he shoves the book into her hands and flips to a page somewhere in the middle covered with his bubbly yet still messy handwriting.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s the weekend anyway. Just look!”

The page, and a good chunk of the pages following it, is covered with elaborate sketches and notes that don’t quite follow the lines of the paper. There’s so much packed into every square inch that she can barely make sense of any of it, everything blurring into a mess of ink blue scribbles.

“What is this?”

“Our plans!” Kageyama gets up from his place at the desk and comes over to peer over their shoulders.

“Plans for what,” she asks carefully, a headache already pressing against her skull.

“For pranking Terushima!” Hinata practically vibrates with excitement and Yachi does her best to not roll her eyes.

Terushima had been her friend for as long as she could remember; his sly smirking face at the edges of almost all of her childhood memories. They had been inseparable for years, until he started making more and more friends and she just couldn’t keep up. He was surrounded by people everywhere he went, knowing the names of almost everyone in every class and always having someone to sit with at lunch or walk the halls with. He did so well with crowds, thrived under the constant attention, but it all made Yachi’s head spin. That’s why she gravitated towards Hinata when he first came to their school. He was loud and exciting, yes, and almost too much to handle sometimes, but he was alone, and people are so much easier to deal with when they’re alone.

She didn’t really understand the rivalry between Hinata and Terushima but it was apparent that they had never liked each other. Which didn’t make any sense to her since they were so similar in the way they were easily excited and constantly in motion. Maybe that was the problem. Similar poles push each other away. Sometimes it felt like they were competing for her attention which was unnecessary. She loved them both equally. Well…maybe not _completely_ equally.

“I don’t think this is a great idea,” she mumbles, flipping through the pages and grimacing at the little Terushima stick figures in varying levels of distress and embarrassment.

“I think they’re all brilliant,” Hinata retorts, staring lovingly down at a particularly tormented Terushima.

“That one was my idea,” Kageyama says, his long arm brushing her skin as he points over her shoulder at one of their plans. There’s something she almost classifies as glee in his voice.

The plan, however, is terrible. Under his finger a scrawny blue Terushima bites into a sandwich, and in the next panel he’s spitting out something rectangular in his palm.

“Are those _razor blades_? In his _sandwich_!?”  She turns to look at Kageyama, mouth agape as she tries to comprehend just how dangerous his plan is, but he just smiles.

“Great, isn’t it?”

“Yeah!” Hinata laughs, reaching around to punch Kageyama’s shoulder playfully. “It’s brilliant! And so simple too. You can get razor blades practically anywhere.”

Yachi pushes the notebook into Hinata’s lap and stands up, starting to feel sick to her stomach again. Kageyama scoots closer to fill the gap she left and the two start poring over their notes, voices bright and enthusiastic.

The boys had pranked each other before, definitely, and despite her best efforts she was always pulled into it, but never like this. It had always been simple things like making a mess that other had to clean up, or hiding something and sending the other on a scavenger hunt around the school grounds to find it. Simple things. Playful things. But never anything like this. Never something that could get someone hurt, until Kageyama showed up.

And it’s partially her fault. She knows that. She’s as much to blame for bringing him here as Hinata is, but she regrets it wholeheartedly and she’s almost positive the other boy doesn’t. Kageyama is dangerous, there’s no doubt about it, no way to get round that information, but Hinata treats him like a school friend. It makes Yachi worry; more than anything had ever made her worry before, and the way Hinata looks up at Kageyama as he laughs at one of their doodles makes her stomach twist painfully.

She didn’t trust him, _couldn’t_ trust him, but she knew there was no way to convince Hinata of that fact.

“Is this because of the glitter thing yesterday?” She asks, sitting in the desk chair and wringing her hands, trying her best to return to the conversation and calm down.

“It wasn’t just glitter, Hitoka,” Hinata says, eyes darkening at the memory. “It was glitter _and_ maple syrup. I still feel sticky.”

“Maybe you didn’t shower correctly,” Kageyama mutters, flipping to the next page.

“I know, I know. It was awful and I tried to stop him but I don’t think that warrants something like this,” she tells him, gesturing vaguely at the notebook in Kageyama’s hands.

“You worry too much, Hitoka,” he tells her, rolling his eyes. “It’s not that dangerous. Besides he already has a hole in his tongue what’s a few more?”

“How about putting something else in his sandwich? Like chili paste?” She suggests, hoping to pique his interest with something that has quickly fading effects and doesn’t involve scar tissue.

“Or what about that pure capsaicin stuff? I heard that makes people go blind!”

“No, Shouyou! You can prank each other all you want but nothing that’ll get anyone hurt.” She rubs her temples, not having the energy to tell him that capsaicin does not make people go blind. “You know what? New rule.”

“Huh?”

“No messing with people’s food and no weapons whatsoever.”

“That’s two rules!” Hinata throws up his hands, mouth open as if he’s surprised to find just how unfair a world that won’t let him murder his fellow students is.

“You’re lucky it’s only two!” She yells, trying to figure out when exactly she became the babysitter for _two_ reckless boys, both being taller and louder than her. And one an _actual demon_.

“Razor blades aren’t even weapons!” Hinata argues, trying everything he can to get her to agree with him, which only aggravates her farther.

Drastic times call for drastic measures, and so, while making direct eye contact she takes the notebook from Kageyama and rips out the razor blade sandwich page, uncapping her red pen with her teeth.

“Hitoka, no-,”

She almost smiles triumphantly as she covers the whole page with a big red X, retracing both lines several times to make the mark thicker and darker before handing it to him.

“You’re no fun,” he huffs, blowing out his cheeks like a pouty child.

“The last one almost killed him,” Kageyama says, almost too quietly for them to hear.

“What?” They ask in unison, and Yachi realizes that Kageyama’ expression has fallen to something sinister, his hands gripping the edges of Hinata’s mattress so hard small scorch marks appear underneath his fingertips. She flinches when he makes eye contact with her.

“Yesterday,” he continues, keeping his voice low. “That bucket almost smashed into his head.”

“But-,”

“I pushed him out of the way.”

Jealousy slips back into Yachi’s stomach like a snake, accompanied by a hot wash of shame. She should’ve been there for him. She should’ve helped him, but all she could do was sit helplessly and watch as the other students held her back. She was thankful Kageyama was there to stop it; however she couldn’t help but wish she was the one to do it.

“Won’t this just aggravate the situation, though?” She asks, cutting into the silence and pushing away her feelings before this knowledge can spur a dangerous amount of vengeance in Hinata.

“He doesn’t understand!” Kageyama stands suddenly, somehow appearing taller than he already was. “Someone could have gotten really hurt and that boy didn’t even realize it!”

“It was an accident!”

“Hey, Kageyama,” Hinata says, looking worriedly between the two of them. “It’s alright. I’m fine.”

“No! You guys don’t get it either!” He grabs a fistful of his hair and grits his teeth. “You just don’t understand! None of you humans know how fragile you are!”

Yachi and Hinata watch in silence as Kageyama sits back on the bed, dropping his head into his hands, his words almost too quiet to understand. “You get hurt so easily. I can’t always stop it.”

Yachi is stunned, mouth opening and closing like a fish gulping in the tense air around them, but Hinata knows exactly what to do.

“Hey, man,” he says gently, wandering just a bit closer to Kageyama and kneeling. Yachi has only seen this softer tender side of him in select moments, like when he would bring her down from a panic attack or soothe her when she cried. It was a Hinata only she had known, until now. “Humans are a lot stronger than you think. There was this guy once, Phineas something I think, who had an iron rod go through his head and he lived just fine.”

“That sounds fake,” Kageyama replies, his voice much more even than before. Hinata picks up on his change of tone and a smile ghosts across his features.

“No, it’s totally true! Right, Hitoka?”

“Y-yeah, I think I remember reading about something like that,” she says, nodding as the muscles of her shoulders relax.

Once again she doesn’t understand it but somehow the brewing fight in the room dissipates and the boys return to talking casually with each other.

She can see it in Hinata’s features, just how much he already cares for Kageyama. Just how much he thinks of the demon as a real friend. As a companion. And the thought that she might not be his best friend much longer increases her sadness and worry for his safety even more.

Is Kageyama even capable of caring for Hinata as much as he does for him? Is he capable of showing that level of trust and loyalty? That level of emotion at all? Yachi is terrified for Hinata; for how hurt he will be when he realizes that his friendship is one sided. For how devastated he will be when Kageyama leaves without as much as a goodbye when their task is completed.

She doesn’t want it to happen, of course. She’d rather see him happy with a different friend than only moderately satisfied with her, but she doesn’t trust Kageyama. Hinata had said she doesn’t know him the way he does, but maybe Hinata doesn’t know him the way Yachi does either. Yachi knows him as what he is; a demon. Pure and simple, and it’s dangerous to think of him in any other way.

She hopes he can feel her emotions right now. She hopes he knows how much she distrusts him and how she’ll be keeping a close eye on him until she’s sure of his intentions. She hates feeling this way, but she just can’t bring herself to think differently.

Yachi stays over for a while longer, sitting on the bedroom floor and making adjustments to the prank notes with the red pen while the boys complain; snacking here and there on juice boxes and sandwiches that Natsu brings in around noon.

Even though she and Kageyama manage to keep up casual conversation, which is better than nothing, the two of them remain careful around each other, walking on verbal eggshells while Hinata remains none the wiser.

After finishing the last page of the notebook she stands up, stretching her stiff back and yawning. “I think I’m going to head home now.”

“Alright. See you tomorrow, Hitoka,” Hinata replies, taking the last bite of his sandwich and waving.

Kageyama nods almost imperceptibly in her direction. Better than nothing.

“Don’t forget to finish Mr Sawamura’s essay,” she tells him as she gathers her things scattered around the room and shoves them back into her bag.

Hinata just mumbles in agreement as he licks peanut butter and jelly that leaked out of his sandwich off of his fingers.

“And wash your hands. I heard there’s a flu going around the school.” Yachi dusts her dress and slings the bag over her shoulder.

“Okay, _mom_ ,” he teases, smirking in her direction in a way that makes her heart flutter, even with sticky pink smears across his cheeks.

“Don’t stay up late again. I’ll be by in the morning,” she adds as she slips through the door, smiling at the ‘Just go!’ he yells behind her.

She quickly tells Hinata’s mom and Natsu goodbye before stepping out into the afternoon sunshine and making her way home; thoughts about how important the Hinata family is to her filling her mind. They have always treated her so well, so warmly, and there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to ensure their happiness. But with Kageyama there she’s not sure she can keep that promise anymore. Some things are just too big for her thin shoulder to carry, some forces too strong for her to move, but she would try her damndest until the end.


	4. Chapter 4

Hinata checks around the corner carefully before stepping around it, making sure that no students are still straggling along in the locker room. Thankfully everyone followed the teacher out to the soccer field for gym class like they were supposed to, much more innocent plans in their heads than the one in Hinata’s.

“Come on,” he whispers, waving for Kageyama to follow him along the rows of lockers, looking for the one marked 203. He stands upright as he becomes less nervous, the sound of students yelling drifting in through the high windows and removing his fear of being caught. “Ah! Here it is!”

Locker 203 sits right where he thought it would, between lockers 201 and 205, the silver numbers on its front faded and covered with various sharpie doodles.

“What are these things?” Kageyama asks, spinning the combination lock and eyeing the row of lockers, stopping on one with a particularly lewd doodle of a well endowed stick figure.

“They’re where we keep our uniforms and shoes and stuff during gym class,” Hinata explains, already accustomed to the random questions Kageyama asks about things that seem so obvious to him. He never realized so many aspects of his daily life and culture could seem odd to an outsider.

“You humans sure change your clothes a lot,” Kageyama says, watching as Hinata takes a scrap of paper out of his pocket and starts inputting the numbers into the lock.

“Maybe you could learn something from us,” he replies, sighing and starting over as he passes up the notch indicating 14 on the lock. “You’ve been wearing that same emo getup since you got here.”

His eyebrows narrow for a moment and Hinata pleads internally for Kageyama not to make him explain what emo means. He looks down at his tattered jeans and combat boots before looking back up. “I think my clothes look fine.”

“They look great for 2007. Heads up, buddy, My Chemical Romance broke up, the black parade is over. No one wears smudged eyeliner anymore.”

“I don’t wear eyeliner!”

“You mean that’s natural?” Hinata asks, lock momentarily forgotten as he inspects the dark lines beneath Kageyama’s eyes. “That can’t be healthy.”

“Just shut up and finish the job.”

“Right.”

Hinata opens the lock with a satisfying click, unable to stop his mouth from stretching into a wide smile as he pulls the neatly folded clothes out. “This is going to be great. Here,” he says, handing them over to Kageyama, “give me the other bag.”

Kageyama produces a tied plastic shopping bag and hands it over, holding it between his thumb and forefinger like a dirty dish towel. “I don’t think it will fit.”

“No it probably won’t. For someone who’s so loud and scary Tanaka’s sister _is_ pretty small,” he shrugs, untying the bag and pulling out a bright red bikini. He looks at it for a moment, not sure exactly how it works, before shoving it in the locker and shutting the door back. “Let’s see how Terushima likes _that_.”

“I can’t believe Tanaka brought you his sister’s clothes,” Kageyama says, eying a red string hanging from the bottom corner of the locker door. 

“Knowing Saeko she probably gave it up freely.” Hinata laughs, picturing Tanaka explaining their plan to his sister and the girl bursting into laughter and agreeing immediately. He would have to remember to take pictures for the both of them since Tanaka had gone home with the flu earlier that day, only stopping in to make sure the bikini made it into Hinata’s hands.

Most of the other students had caught onto the all out prank war that had erupted between Hinata and Terushima over the last two weeks, and some, like Tanaka, had done all they could to make sure they were a part of it. He and Noya had sort of formed a tag team of double agents, switching prank alliance with each new development and participating in whichever prank they thought would win that round. Those who weren’t involved had taken to watching everything unfold like a reality TV show. Some teachers included; forgiving punishments if the results made them laugh enough.

It seemed everyone was in on some way or another except Yachi who was trying her best to avoid the entire ordeal; but even she had a few laughs here and there.

Hinata is practically giddy as they make their way to the bathroom at the other end of the locker room, knowing for sure that this time, _this prank_ , was going to be his best yet. Conscious of his time running out he works as fast as he can, trailing all the way to the last stall and opening the door.

“Kageyama, the clothes.” He reaches his arm out and takes Terushima’s school uniform, trying to ignore the fact that it’s so much bigger and longer than his own, and drops it directly in the toilet bowl. He turns back around with a satisfied smile, wiping his hands together to signify the job is done. “Perfect.”

“You should head out to class before Azumane realizes you’re gone,” Kageyama tells him, looking down at the slowly soaking clothes and wrinkling his nose in disgust.

“Ah man, I hope he isn’t making us do fitness training again,” Hinata groans, making his way out of the locker room and in the direction of the rest of his class.

Sure enough, Mr. Azumane, a large but rather timid man, barely notices Hinata slip into the back of the crowd as he crouches down and encourages a row of students to finish their set of pushups. Azumane is pretty lenient but he seems to often forget that the amount of pushups _he_ can complete is nowhere near the normal amount for his students.

Yachi sits towards the front with the rest of the groups that already finished their sets, giving him what amounts to a death glare on her completely non-threatening face. He just smirks and waves, but it quickly turns to a frown as Terushima finishes his pushups and slides up next to Yachi, throwing a hand around her shoulder.

“Alright,” Azumane calls, looking at his clipboard. “Next up is Ennoshita, Tsukishima, Kunimi, Hinata, and Kyoutani. Only two groups left and you guys are done for the day.”

Hinata finds that doing pushups while riding on anger mixed with the knowledge that the target of your anger will soon be humiliated in front of the entire school is so much easier. He finishes his set quickly and moves to the side, not even bothering to go plant himself between Yachi and Terushima.

Let him have his last few minutes of happiness, he thinks as Terushima shoots him a quick smug smile across the grass. He’d see who’s laughing in the end.

Yachi seems to know something is up, watching him carefully with her eyes that seem to pierce right through him, but he refuses to let her pull him down from this high. It isn’t even ruined by Michimiya getting sick during the last set of pushups and throwing up on the grass next to him. The flu Yachi talked about must be spreading around school faster than he thought, but he couldn’t concern himself with that right now.

“You all did great today! Let’s try for two sets tomorrow, okay?” Azumane beams as the class groans, but Hinata barely hears any of it as he dashes inside to throw his school uniform on. There’s no way he’s going to miss this.

Just as he finishes doing up the buttons on his shirt the boys’ locker room erupts into laughter and his heart swells with pride. He dashes between the aisles toward Terushima’s locker, most of the other boys, including an almost bored looking Kageyama, following him.

He can barely contain his excitement, however, as he turns the corner it drops immediately. The laughs aren’t laughs at all, but more like cheers as Terushima struts up and down the aisle sporting the red bikini and grinning like an idiot.

“Hey, Yuuji, try these!” a boy calls from somewhere in the crowd, and Terushima reaches out to grab two baseballs out of the air.

“Great!” He yells, as he shoves them in the bikini top. “Thanks man!”

Once his fake boobs are in place he turns around, finding Hinata’s shocked face in the sea of boys and smiling even wider, almost painfully so. “Thanks for the new outfit, Hinata, it looks great on me. Where’s you get this from? Your mom?” The boys all cheer again as Hinata’s jaw drops, completely blindsided by his reaction.

“N-no,” he stutters, feeling his cheeks burning. “It’s Tanaka’s sister’s.” Suddenly the boys become much more interested in the bright red garb, probably imagining Saeko in it instead of Terushima.

“Well she has great taste,” he says, triumph glinting in his eyes as he turns to continue his makeshift catwalk.

The boys are rolling with laughter, all of them snapping pictures and videos on their phones to share later. Hinata’s own phone stays forgotten in his hand, he doesn’t need it now, Tanaka would definitely see all the pictures he wants online.

“My fashion show is Friday after school and you’re all invited!” Terushima turns dramatically, raising his hands to show all his body at once.

“Okay, okay, what’s going on over here?” Azumane wades through the crowd to find the source of the commotion, flushing a vibrant color perfectly matching Saeko’s bikini when he lays eyes on Terushima. “S-someone explain.”

“My clothes are missing, sir,” Terushima says, not even trying to hide his smirk. “This is all that was left in my locker.”

“And the baseballs?”

“The top wouldn’t stay up. I mean, Tanaka’s sister has some pretty big-,”

“Okay! That’s enough! Just put your gym clothes back on and head to class,” Azumane shouts, slapping a hand to his forehead and probably thinking about how the boys’ shenanigans are going to put him in an early grave.

“Hey, Yuuji!” One of the boys calls from the back of the crowd. “Your clothes are in the toilet!”

“Great! I’ve been needing to wash them anyway,” he laughs, skipping off in the direction of the bathroom, hands on his chest to keep his baseballs from falling out.

Kageyama lays a hand on Hinata’s shoulder, probably feeling the cold disappointment in the pit of his stomach slowly traveling down his legs, making them wobble slightly. Pushing that horrible sensation off, Hinata turns to stalk out of the locker room.

He walks past Azumane who’s whispering under his breath, something along the lines of “Daichi never has to put up with this”, and doesn’t stop until he’s back in the classroom. Without a word Kageyama takes his usual empty desk at Hinata’s side.

Terushima tries to wear the bikini out to lunch until the teachers shut down his plans, but the pictures of him quickly make their way around the school. He basically basks in the attention, making sure to point out at every chance he got that it was all Hinata’s idea.

Even though he had tried to make it look like they were friends, anyone who knew anything about the two of them knew Hinata was being mocked.

Yachi even tried to comfort him as they walked home that afternoon, saying he put in a great effort and she was glad it was a totally safe and approved prank; except throwing Terushima’s uniform in the toilet _was_ a bit much.

The problem was that Yachi’s words weren’t what Hinata wanted to hear, so he opted to concentrate on the only thing going on in his head; the thoughts of revenge.

“We’re going to get him back. We’re going to get him back good.” He tells Kageyama, a new ferocity in his eyes, making Yachi sigh.

“But this was our prank,” Kageyama replies, looking confused. “It’s his turn next.”

“Well…I’m going to get him back for not being humiliated!”

“He did look kind of good,” Yachi mumbles, but Hinata ignores her.

“Alright then what’s the plan?” Kageyama asks, kicking at a chunk of asphalt with his big dumb emo boots.

“I don’t know yet, but it’ll be good! Trust me!”

“You said this one would be good,” he mumbles, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“This one was good!” Hinata yells, throwing his hands up. “How was I supposed to know that asshole would actually _enjoy_ wearing a bikini?”

“Best way to win a war is to know the enemy,” Kageyama shrugs, probably enjoying pushing Hinata’s buttons like this. “Maybe you need to get to know him better.”

“Yeah!” Yachi chimes in, that familiar motherly look in her eyes. “Why don’t you hang out with him more? You’ll learn a lot and, oh I don’t know, actually become friends and stop this nonsense?”

“Over my dead body, Hitoka,” Hinata sneers, feeling nauseous just at the thought of hanging out with Terushima voluntarily. “Besides, revenge is a dish best served cold, right? So if we were friends it wouldn’t be cold anymore.”

“That’s…not what that means,” Yachi sighs, slapping her hand to her forehead.

“Well whatever. It doesn’t matter. The point is I’m going to make him pay for this.”

***

“Hitoka, please!” Hinata begs, rubbing at his mouth with his shirt sleeve as they walk home the next day, trying to rub away the remnants of Terushima’s last attack. “Help me!”

“For the last time, Shouyou, no! I’m not getting involved in this!” She shakes her head, walking purposely in front of the two boys and trying to seem stern. “And stop doing that, you’re going to stain your shirt.”

“You don’t have to help or anything just tell me what he’s afraid of,” he continues, dropping his arm and trying to pop into her line of sight but she evades him with ease.

“That’s an invasion of privacy. Do you want me to tell him about your wetting the bed problem?”

“You wet the bed?” Kageyama asks, raising an eyebrow. “Aren’t you like 17?”

“Shut up! I haven’t for a long time!” Hinata retorts. “Hitoka!”

“It sucks, doesn’t it?” She says, a self satisfied smirk on her face. “I’m not telling you any of Yuuji’s secrets.”

Hinata groans and they continue on without saying a word, their shoes slapping their familiar tune against the well worn path.

“Why are you so protective of that jerk anyway?” Kageyama asks, breaking the silence.

“Because he’s my friend,” she answers simply, the word burning in Hinata’s chest like a branding iron.

“I’m your friend!” He yells, pouting slightly.

“You’re _both_ my friends,” she sighs, pulling on the straps of her bag.

“Is it vampires?”

“What?”

“Ghosts?”

“No.”

“Crabs?”

“No…,”

“Old ladies with sticky lipstick?”

“No! Shouyou, stop it! I’m not going to tell you anything!”

“Look what he did to me, Hitoka!” He shouts, stopping in his tracks on the sidewalk.

She turns slowly to look at him, and he bares his teeth, showing her how ridiculous he looks. All of his teeth and the entire inside of his mouth are completely black, the color staining all the way to the thin line where his lips touch.

“I’m going to look like this for days!”

She looks almost sad for a moment; the same look she had when Hinata had realized all too late that his juice box at lunch had been laced with ink. She had tried to help him wash it out before it set but there wasn’t much they could do. By the time they came back to the classroom the rest of their classmates had already started calling him Black Hole. Even Kageyama had leaned over and whispered “Who’s the emo now?” in the middle of class, and it took every ounce of his self control to not lean over and strangle the invisible demon for the whole class to see.

“I know, Shouyou, it’s awful,” she says, stopping to unlock her front door and let them both inside. “I wish you guys would stop this mess but I know you won’t, and I guess he does deserve retaliation for this one, but I can’t help you.”

“Ughhhh, you’re killing me,” he grumbles, falling backwards on Yachi’s neatly made bed when they enter her room.

“I think you’ll survive. Do you want a snack?” She asks, hanging her bag on the back of her desk chair and folding her uniform jacket.

“Do you have any apples?”

“Of course. I’ll be back.”

She leaves the room and Hinata rolls over, shoving his face in one of her pillows and groaning.

“Yachi’s room is so much nicer than yours,” Kageyama tells him, walking around and inspecting the organized desk and clothes hanging orderly in the closet, separated by color and season. “I especially like how all of her trash is in the trash bin. It’s an amazing stylistic choice.”

“We’re going to lose, Kageyama. All this hard work for nothing.” Hinata mumbles, ignoring the well placed jabs at his own cleanliness.

“What?” He asks, unable to hear Hinata through the pillow.

“We’re going to lose!” He repeats, sitting up and hugging the pillow to his chest. “We’re going to lose and Terushima is going to win! He’s just too damn _good_. I’ll be the laughing stock of the whole school.”

“You already are,” Kageyama shrugs, continuing his pacing around the room, looking at all the things hung on Yachi’s wall; posters, old photographs, highlighted schedules, and other neat things that seem much more interesting to him than Hinata’s mix of band posters and sports flags.

“You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“I am, unfortunately,” he deadpans, not bothering to turn around and engage the conversation fully. “I’m here against my will, remember?”

“You’re both awful,” Hinata pouts, leaning back again and throwing an arm dramatically over his eyes. “If this were a comic book and I needed help avenging my dead parents the murderer would just get away with it because my friends fucking suck.”

“Hey, look at this,”

“They wise old advisor would be like ‘you need the power of friendship to defeat your foes!’ but no one would help me and I’d probably just _die_ -,”

“Dumbass! Shut up and look at this!”

“There you go again,” he sighs, rolling over to face Kageyama’s direction. “Not caring about my tragic and probably very painful death.”

“I’m going to strangle you,” Kageyama growls, taking something off the wall and stepping over to the bed.

“Good, speed up the process. Save me the time.”

“Just look at this!” Kageyama drops to the floor by Hinata’s head and hands him a picture, a young Yachi and Terushima catching his eye. He takes it and holds it up above his face, the two kids looking back at him from some sort of birthday scene.

“Great, just rub it in my face how my best friend and my mortal enemy are super close and probably secretly planning my murder,” he scoffs, handing the picture back.

“Look harder you idiot,” Kageyama barks, catching Hinata’s arm and shoving it back towards his face. “Look at his face.”

Hinata pulls the picture down and squints, focusing on the tiny blurry Terushima and the concerned looking Yachi. “He’s crying.”

“ _Why_ is he crying?”

“Because he was a little bitch?”

“Oh my god, you’re hopeless. _What is there that could have made him cry_?”

“They ran out of cake? He didn’t get the present he asked for?” Kageyama slaps a hand to his forehead and Hinata sighs. “I don’t know, man, I’m not a detective!”

“Clearly. What’s he looking at?” Kageyama says through gritted teeth and Hinata wonders why he won’t just tell him the answer already.

“That creepy ass clown on the side?”

“Yes! Now why is that?” Kageyama looks relieved that he finally figured it out but Hinata doesn’t feel as if any of this is helpful.

“Because its making faces at him out of frame? I don’t know what I’m supposed to be getting from this-,”

“It’s because he’s scared you fucking _dumbass_! He’s scared of clowns!” Kageyama explodes, breathing heavy as if he just ran a marathon. “I had no idea one person could be so _stupid_!”

Suddenly everything clicks in Hinata’s mind and he bolts up from the bed. “Clowns! He’s afraid of clowns!”

“Oh my god,” Kageyama whispers, staring off towards the wall, his eyes vacant. “This is unbelievable.”

“This is great! I have a perfect idea! Oh man this is going to be perfect! He’ll regret _everything_!”

“I’ve fought in wars and now I’m stuck here with this idiot,” Kageyama mutters to himself, continuing on about how respected he is back home or something or another. Hinata can’t be bothered to listen though. He has a prank to plan.

“What’s going on in here?” Yachi asks, finally returning with sliced apples and some glasses of juice on a tray, her eyes narrowing at the mess Hinata made of her bed from rolling around on top of the blankets.

“You wouldn’t believe-,”

“We figured it out!” Hinata beams, holding the picture out towards her surprised face. “Clowns!”

“Where’d you get that?” She asks, setting the tray down and snatching the picture out of his hands.

“It was on the wall,” he tells her, standing triumphantly with his hands on his hips, grinning despite his stained black teeth.

“Shouyou,” she breathes, looking down at the photo with her eyebrows knit together. “Don’t be too hard on him about this.”

“Are you kidding? He’s going to pay for this in screams of terror and begging for mercy,” he says, pointing his thumb at his mouth.

“I’m going to have gray hair by the time we graduate,” Yachi mumbles to herself, but Hinata ignores her, grabbing his notebook and beginning to plan out his master prank. This one would work, he knew it. It had to.

***

The next day at lunch Hinata and Yachi’s usual friend group decide to eat in the classroom again, other students gathering around them and shifting restlessly from a stale day of no prank action.

Hinata can’t help but smile the whole time. His bag loaded down with supplies for his imminent attack feels like a treasure trove under his chair.

After leaving Yachi’s house the evening before he and Kageyama had stopped by the costume supply store, spending every cent of allowance Hinata had in his wallet on materials, even managing to barter a few extra for free from the shy store clerk.

Yachi had refused to speak to him all morning when he showed up with an overstuffed bag, only giving in once lunch started because she was always bad at staying mad at him. He doubted he’d be able to get her to participate though.

Terushima and Kenma get up to go grab food from the cafeteria and Hinata immediately jumps to action, distributing supplies to the rest of the students who all smile excitedly, more than willing to take part in the prank. Even Sawamura takes one from his seat at the head of the class, trying not to smirk and telling Hinata sternly not to let this get to his head.

With everyone in position they wait patiently for Terushima to return, Hinata sending a quick discrete thumbs up in Kageyama’s direction which he doesn’t return.

Terushima can be heard approaching from all the way down the hallway and Hinata had never been more thankful for how loud he is. Everyone turns their faces away from the classroom door, giggling and whispering amongst themselves as they wait; the suspense and promise of a good show making them giddy.

Finally, the door opens, and slowly all thirty or so students turn their faces towards the sound, each one covered by the creepiest clown mask Hinata could get his hands on. Thirty smeared white and blue faces with bulbous red noses and exposed yellow teeth stare straight at Terushima. As he screams louder than Hinata thought was possible for one person and scrambles backwards, all thirty students burst into laughter.

“Shit! Oh god, they’ve come for me! Kenma, go! Run! Save yourself!” Terushima yells, hitting the wall and falling to the floor, covering his face.

Kenma, looking completely unperturbed, bends down next to Terushima and puts a hand on his shoulder, saying something that can’t be heard over the howling students. Yachi shoots Hinata a disapproving look as she makes her way to where Terushima is still sitting by the door, but he’s laughing too hard to care, everything having gone so much better than he could have imagined.

Some students even come up and clap him on the back, congratulating him on his victory and asking to keep the masks as a memento.

Amongst the chaos he manages to glance at Kageyama in the back corner where he’s less likely to bump into someone and, unless he’s mistaken, he swears he sees a small smile blooming on the demon’s lips.

He wants to jump up and go to him to discuss their success but he knows he can’t while they’re around the others, which for some reason sends a pang of sadness through his chest. Instead he just watches that smile slowly spread and wonders if maybe the two of them have really become friends after all.

Kageyama turns towards him and they lock eyes, Hinata’s bright smile infecting him across the room. But as quickly as his smile came, it drops, and Hinata’s skin goes cold, raising goosebumps along his arms.

Before he has a chance to shoot Kageyama a questioning look he slips out of the room, eyes narrowed and face stern. Knowing he can’t get very far on his own Hinata follows, stopping a ways down the hallway where Kageyama stands staring down two separate paths.

He checks that no one is near them before speaking.

“Hey, what’s up? Is something wrong?” It’s a dumb question. He knows something is wrong; he can feel it just as much as Kageyama can.

“Someone else is here.”

“What?”

“For a moment I swear I felt another one of my kind,” he explains, choosing the left path and following it.

“You mean another demon?” Hinata asks, jogging to keep up.

“Yes. For just a moment. But there’s so many people here I can’t tell where it came from,” he says, stopping abruptly and turning back the way they came, mumbling to himself.

“What is it doing here?” Hinata asks, twisting his head to look around the hall as if this demon was going to pop out at him out of nowhere. 

“Probably the same thing I’m doing. Someone summoned them for some task they couldn’t do themselves.” Hinata wasn’t sure if Kageyama meant it to feel like a jab at him but it definitely did. “That’s the only reason I can think of a demon being _here_ of all places.” He doesn’t turn around as he speaks, and Hinata can’t help but feel there’s something more important he isn’t telling him.

“But who-,” he starts, stopping as a thought suddenly pops into his head, making all of the questions in his mind click into place. “It has to be Terushima!”

“What has to be Terushima?” Yachi is around the corner as they pass back through the main hallway, arms crossed but eyes curious.

“The other demon master,” he says plainly as if it wasn’t a brand new discovery. “Just think about it!”

“What _other_ demon master-,”

“His pranks are way too good for him to be doing alone,” Hinata continues, cutting off Yachi’s questions and following Kageyama down the other stretch of hallway. “He always seems to know what’s coming, except today of course, and…I don’t know there has to be something else but it totally makes sense!”

“That makes no sense!” Yachi shouts, whisper yelling as to not draw any attention; one of her many talents. “There’s no way Yuuji has a demon!”

“Why? Because he’d tell you?” It comes out much more accusatory than he meant it to.

“What? No! Because I don’t think students just go around summoning demons all over the place. We’re an exception, Shouyou, not a rule. It was probably an adult in the school.”

“But-,”

“She’s right,” Kageyama says, stopping in the middle of the hallway again and sighing, dropping his shoulders.

“I am?”

“She is?”

“You just want to pass the blame onto Terushima to make yourself look better. You’re projecting,” Kageyama tells him. “The trail disappeared.”

“That’s not true,” Hinata mumbles. That was a lie; it was completely true. “I really think it’s him. And if you guys don’t believe me then I’ll prove it.”

“Shouyou, this feels more important than your prank war,” Yachi says softly, putting a hand on his arm and spreading warmth across his chilled skin.

“Wh-whatever. Just wait, I’ll show you guys,” he stutters, pulling his arm away from Yachi’s hand and heading back the way they came. “Come on, class is going to start.”

Kageyama stays in the middle of the hallway until he’s forced to follow, staying just on the edge of his breadth of freedom.

Hinata can feel how serious he is but chooses to ignore it. If there’s another demon in the school they’ll find it and he’ll prove that Terushima was the one that brought it there.

He needs it to be true. It has to be.


	5. Chapter 5

Kageyama’s body doesn’t need nightly recuperation and rest like a human’s does, but the state of absolute boredom he goes into every day in Hinata and Yachi’s classroom is probably the closest he gets to the sensation of tiredness.

It’s so mundane sitting there day after day and listening to the same people teach the same things. Sugawara with his swirling chalk lines and numbers that somehow become other numbers through excessively convoluted processes, running his hands through his silver hair when all he receives are confused stares from the students but never failing to smile. Sawamura with his sturdy jaw and softly supportive encouragements as he barks out English verb tenses and vowel sounds that defy logic. Bokuto who refuses honorifics and explains historical events with explosive energy and unrelated hand gestures; one of the reasons he’s the most liked among the students. And then Kiyoko, with her stern gray eyes that seem to see everything. Kageyama still hadn’t gathered too much information on her other than the fact she cared deeply for the students.

The teachers were interesting, yes, but the entire concept of school was just something Kageyama could not get accustomed to, and the only thing distinguishing the days from a hazy swirl of dormancy was the time spent with Hinata and Yachi.

Well, less Yachi than Hinata. She seemed to hate him. Always shooting glances his way with distrust lingering beneath her blonde lashes, and he knew if their bond was any stronger he would feel that sizzling acidic loathing in the pit of his stomach at all times.

Hinata, however, was the exact opposite. He grew more and more trusting by the moment, his bright eyes so full of hope and excitement every time they met Kageyama’s as if he found something new to appreciate about their connection with each passing day.  Did he deserve it? No, definitely not; but he enjoyed it as much as he allowed himself to.

Kageyama constantly found himself zoning out during school hours, just sitting silently in his usual empty desk and letting his mind release and wander around the room, latching onto whatever seemed most interesting. More often than not it settled on Hinata, his eyes following the soft curve of the bridge of his nose and the way the light from the window makes his hair look like a softly flickering flame at the edges.

Today, though, the clouds outside the window were darker, threatening muggy spring rain and casting fluctuating shadows across Hinata’s face as he bends over his notebook, scribbling furiously while Sawamura’s voice fills the room and presses against the walls like a warm bubble. Sitting up front the teacher reads from a novel to the smaller than usual class, at least a quarter of the students missing due to the strange flu still making its way around the school.

So many things in this world had changed since the last time Kageyama was here, hundreds of years ago, when humans were more likely to speak through the clanking of steel swords against shields than expressions and emotional contact. However the more he thinks about it humans haven’t changed, only the world around them. They are still useless, still fragile, yet still beautiful and endlessly fascinating.

He thought he had learned his lesson the last time, learned just how quick the light of a human life can burn out. He even vowed never to be so easily enraptured by a human existence again, but he might be losing himself a second time.

Hinata reminds him so much of his last master. Both so bold and brash and completely moronic at times, diving into danger with a smile on their faces. It was the passion most of all; every time Hinata spoke about something important to him Kageyama swore he saw a flash of an old familiar face and his stomach turned cold, heart unable to decide whether it wanted to race or ache. Except his old master was gone, he was sure of that, and he wasn’t willing to make the same mistake twice. 

Now, one of the things that definitely changed are the books, he thinks, less based on religion and more focused on telling a story with some sort of meaning to it. Or at least this one was, with its convoluted metaphors told from the confused mind of a teenage boy. It was odd coming from the voice of Sawamura but even Kageyama related to certain sentences.

He listens; eyes trained on Hinata as he tries to convince himself that its mere coincidence his eyes fall on the boy’s features so easily.

“She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down,” Sawamura reads, only holding the attention of a few overly relaxed students. “That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if it’s not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.”

Hinata pokes his tongue out of the corner of his lips, the two pinks different by marginal shades, and Kageyama realizes that if he changes the word ‘girl’ to ‘human’ in that quote he’s never heard something so true in his long existence. Humans, and every stupid thing they do, are somehow beautiful, like walking art in this world he has trained himself to hate.

Hinata shifts in his seat, tapping his pencil against his cheek and pouting slightly as he reviews his work. Kageyama shakes his head, trying to get rid of these invasive thoughts. No, he doesn’t feel anything special for Hinata, or for human existence as a whole. He learned how dangerous that can be before and had promised himself he wouldn’t get caught up in the aesthetic of it again.

He feels sick suddenly, remembering the loneliness he still hasn’t recovered from, but pushes down the feeling to keep Hinata from feeling it too. That soft gaze that always seems to ask ‘are you okay?’ is the last thing he needs right now.

“So what does this quote reveal about Holden?” Sawamura asks, his sudden questioning alerting some of the dozing students who blink emptily at him. “Anyone?” No one answers and his sigh seems to echo around the room. “We’ve seen before his tendency to push people away the second they get too close, which is associated with the hinting at past emotional trauma. But here we see a craving for closeness and intimacy that we haven’t seen from him before. We see an emotional desire peek through his constant state of pessimism.”

The wave of nausea returns and sweat beads on Kageyama’s forehead, everything Sawamura said all too real. He feels almost personally called out by this character analysis.

Hinata looks up at him suddenly, that look he was so afraid of staring right at him and he freezes. Just as Hinata goes to raise his hand, probably to ask to go to the restroom so he can figure out what’s wrong, Kageyama shakes his head, doing his best to signal that he’s fine. Hinata doesn’t release the tension in his eyebrows or the worry in his gaze but thankfully he stays put. Relieved, Kageyama puts his head down on the cool wood grain of the desk, trying to calm down.

He’s going stir crazy, that’s all. The light storm outside and the restless quiet inside is making his head spin; mix that with his tendency to reminisce at the worst times and his head becomes a complete mess.

He’s not harboring secret feelings, he’s just anxious. Or so he tells himself.

Kageyama spends the rest of the class period trying to tune out Sawamura’s voice and the conflicting emotions battling inside of him. As hard as he tries though, certain bits of the story ingrain themselves in his mind like words tattooed on his skin.

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

Sawamura then proceeds to explain how this quote is the answer the protagonist has been searching for on how to combat his own sense of loneliness, and Kageyama starts to believe that whoever wrote this godforsaken novel is the most sadistic type of genius he can imagine. He can only keep denying things to himself for so long, but he is willing to test just how long that may be.

By the time lunch rolls around, soft rain pattering against the windows, Kageyama isn’t sure he’s ready to look Hinata in the eyes and face the questions he undoubtedly has for him. Thankfully just as he begins to speak over the din of the students suddenly coming back to life in their seats Yachi bounds up to them, bright eyed and chipper from the lack of excitement that day.

“Wanna go to the cafeteria? I hear the lunch lady is making curry rice.”

“She makes curry rice all the time,” Hinata answers, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah but she’s good at it and I didn’t pack anything today,” Yachi says, not losing her cheery tone and even shooting a small smile Kageyama’s way; a gesture that, like the first time, catches him off guard.

Remembering the words from the protagonist of the novel Sawamura read in class, he agrees; girls can really make you crazy.  All of these mixed signals only makes him more confused.

“Is that okay?” Hinata asks, Kageyama barely realizing it’s him he’s asking.

He just shrugs it off. “Whatever. I don’t eat anyway.”

Worry returns to Hinata’s face but once again as he starts to ask that question Kageyama has no desire to answer he’s interrupted, his eyes falling on Terushima as he quickly slips out of the classroom.

“Yeah, okay, let’s go,” he says, narrowing his eyes at the open door.

The two teens carefully sandwich Kageyama between them in the hallways and lunch line to make sure no one accidentally bumps into him; a habit they’ve formed in the last few weeks, warm skin pressed to cold and back to warm.

As they chatter along amongst themselves and with the other students they pass Kageyama tries to focus on what’s important. His thoughts revolve around finding the source of the other demon energy he sensed and finishing up whatever he’s here for so he can go home. It’s so easy to get caught up in this life of short lived existences and small scale conflicts but he doesn’t belong here.

Yachi and Hinata find an empty table near the back corner of the cafeteria where they can all talk comfortably without drawing attention, sitting their steaming trays down and digging in.

“We aren’t going to have any homework on that book Sawamura was reading, are we?” Hinata asks, stuffing a spoonful of the sticky rice in his mouth.

“Nothing much. Just a short character analysis of Holden and what we think he means by ‘Catcher in the Rye’,” Yachi answers politely between bites. “Why? Were you not paying attention?”

“Of course not, it was boring,” he groans, stabbing dejectedly at his next bite. “It was just some moody guy complaining about everything he could think of and saying ‘if you want to know the truth’ over and over. I’m pretty sure nothing he said was the truth.”

“It was actually really interesting,” she says, handing Hinata a napkin to wipe curry from his cheek. “The way Holden speaks tells you so much about him. I thought it was all really clever.”

“Hitoka, have I ever told you how wonderful you are?”

“I’m not writing your essay for you, Shouyou,” Yachi sighs, shaking her head and taking another bite of rice.

“Ugh, fine,” he mumbles, leaning his head on his hand and turning to face Kageyama. “Were you listening?”

“Sort of,” he shrugs. “Enough for you to bullshit a paper probably.”

Hinata perks up immediately, yelling something about Kageyama being a life saver as Yachi rolls her eyes across the table. He’s halfway through saying something about Kageyama helping him out with his math notes later when his voice drops and goose bumps appear on Kageyama’s skin.

“Didn’t he leave the class before us?” Hinata’s eyes follow something behind Yachi.

“What?” Kageyama and Yachi ask in unison, turning to follow his line of sight to where Terushima slinks into the cafeteria lunch line.

“He definitely left before us. He should have been here already.”

“Shouyou, not again,” Yachi groans, setting her spoon down and carding a hand through the loose part of her hair.

“But where did he go that could have taken so long? That’s suspicious,” he continues, eyes narrowing as Terushima walks by a table where Tsukishima and Yamaguchi are sitting. They talk for a minute before he continues on his way, carrying his tray to an empty table near the door. “I knew it!”

“Here we go,” Yachi sighs, and Kageyama understands completely.

“I knew he was the other demon master! He didn’t sit with them so he could sit alone and talk to his demon!”

“Shut up,” Kageyama hisses, tugging on Hinata’s arm to make him turn back around. “Don’t yell about stuff like that.”

“Sorry,” he breathes, dropping into his seat. “But it’s true! What else could it be? _Who_ else could it be?”

“Literally anyone else,” Yachi says, folding her arms.

Since Kageyama had first brought up feeling another demon they had had this argument over and over again, but after not finding any solid evidence Hinata was getting indignant.

“Where did he go after class? Why is he sitting alone? Try to explain it, Hitoka. You have to admit I’m right.”

“The bathroom. The library. The teacher’s lounge. Maybe he was setting up another prank, who knows,” she lists, each word wiping a little bit of Hinata’s triumphant smile from his face. “And maybe he’s feeling sick or tired and just wanted to eat quietly.”

“But-,”                                                                           

“Hinata, listen,” Kageyama says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yachi is right. You’ve been searching for days and haven’t found any proof. It’s time to let it go, it obviously isn’t him.”

“He’s leaving,” Hinata breathes, completely ignoring everything the other two are trying to tell him and pointing towards where Terushima stands and dumps his mostly full tray into the garbage.

“Wha-,”

“Come on!” He grabs Yachi’s arm at the same time Terushima slips back out the cafeteria, pulling her behind him as he heads to the trash and ducks between tables on his way to the door. Kageyama follows the most close he can without touching anyone.

“Shouyou, stop!” Yachi breaths out as they make it out into the hallway with Terushima nowhere in sight.

“He’s gonna get away!”

Hinata chooses a random direction and takes off down it, his determination seeping into Kageyama’s veins, but after wandering around frantically for a few minutes and ending back where they started, the feelings transmitted by Hinata change completely.

“Shit! We lost him,” Hinata curses, kicking the wall in frustration. The throbbing pain in his foot after it connects tells him it was a stupid idea.

“No, _you_ lost him,” Kageyama tells him, watching Hinata hop on one foot and feeling a brief tingle in the tips of his own toes. “ _We_ weren’t looking. _We_ just got dragged along.”

“Shouyou, come on,” Yachi pants, hands on her knees as she tries to catch her breath. “You can’t really believe Yuuji happened to summon a demon for the same exact purpose you did. It’s just not realistic.”

“Yeah, not very many people are that stupid,” Kageyama mutters, but Hinata ignores him, choosing instead to direct his anger at Yachi.

“What part of this is realistic, Hitoka? Name one part! With everything that’s happened, things you would have told me were impossible a few weeks ago, how can you say something isn’t _realistic_?” He spits the last word, eyes flaring up a thin mahogany color. Kageyama watches as Yachi flinches beneath his tone, not used to being treated that way.

“Don’t yell at her,” he says before he can stop himself. “It’s not her fault that you can’t beat Terushima even with a demon on your side. Or that you’re mad because you can’t prove he has one too.”

“That’s not it, I-,”

“Then what is it? Why are you so hell bent on being right about this?”

Kageyama waits for a response, watching Hinata’s eyes flicker between him and Yachi before falling to the floor, fists clenched at his side.

“Shouyou,” Yachi says softly, stepping forward to lay a hand on his shoulder and try to comfort him but he jerks away from her touch.

“Take him home with you tonight.”

“What?” They say in unison, both looking at each other quickly with confused apprehension.

“I said Kageyama can go home with you tonight! Since you guys want to team up and make me look stupid you can go have the official ‘Shouyou Sucks’ club meeting at _your_ house.” He tries to convey anger but the look on his face comes off more hurt than anything else.

“That’s not what we-,”

“Just leave me alone,” he snaps, pulling away again as Yachi tries to close the gap between them.

Hinata turns and stalks off down the hallway, leaving a stunned Kageyama and a tearful Yachi alone in the hallway just as students start to file out of the cafeteria, heading to class before they run out of time.

With a quick sniff Yachi melts into the crowd, staying close enough to the wall so Kageyama can walk comfortably beside her and at the same time no one else can squeeze between them.

Hinata doesn’t talk to them for the rest of the day, making a point to walk several meters ahead on the way home and barely nodding goodbye when their paths split to reinforce his annoyance.

Yachi doesn’t speak either, staying coldly distant as she leads the way to her house. When she unlocks the door, she holds it open for Kageyama to enter but otherwise shows no signs that she acknowledges his existence.

Once in her bedroom Yachi turns on the radio and sits down at her desk, pulling out her notes from class and booting up her laptop. The awkward tension in the room is so thick Kageyama can almost see it shimmering in the air between them. Taking the hint of silence Kageyama sits on the floor, not sure if Yachi wants him on her bed, and leans his head against his folded arms atop his knees.

The sharp sound of her fingers clicking away on the keyboard taps against Kageyama’s skull, but after awhile it starts to feel almost soothing. That is, until the sound of Yachi’s head hitting the keyboard replaces the other and pulls him out of his thoughts.

“Stupid, useless brain,” she groans, sitting back up and staring at the computer screen. “Why can’t you just do what I tell you?”

“You, uh…, you okay over there?” Kageyama asks, wondering if she forgot he was here.

“It’s this essay,” she answers, surprisingly not ignoring him. “We’re supposed to say what we think ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ means but I can’t think of anything at all.”

“From that book earlier? You were taking notes weren’t you?”

“Yeah, but it’s more of an interpretation thing. The answer isn’t in the book,” she says, idly flipping through the papers on her desk.

Kageyama watches silently for a moment, afraid to speak and somehow make her mad at him again but the moment fades. “Do you want some help?”

Yachi spins in her chair and gives him a questioning look, one he can’t figure out since he can’t feel her emotions as much as he can with Hinata. Thoughts seem to swirl around in her head, her features changing minutely before she settles on a response.

“Sure. I’ll read you the quote.”

She reaches into her bag and pulls out a paperback novel with the same cream and red cover Sawamura had read from that morning, opening it to a dog eared page and running a finger over the paper until she finds the right paragraph.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all,” she starts, voice soft and light and so far from the angst and tension Kageyama expects from the protagonist. “Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”

Kageyama imagines himself in Holden’s place; standing in a big field near a cliff with Hinata and Yachi replacing the children and running around frantically trying to keep them from plummeting to their deaths. It makes sense to him in that regard; how the two of them, and humans in general, are always on the edge of peril. Always needing someone to catch them. He doesn’t know if the answer is correct but he throws it out anyway.

“He wants to protect them. The children, I mean,” he tells her, voice faltering with embarrassment as her intense brown eyes meet his and he’s suddenly terrified of being wrong. “Probably something he couldn’t protect himself from. That’s why he thinks it’s his job to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again.”

“Like how you want to protect Shouyou,” Yachi whispers, nodding as the gears in her head begin to spin. “Not from the same things, but mostly the same concept.”

“Y-yeah, I guess,” he stutters, turning away before she can see the blush on his face.

“You remind me of him, you know,” she continues after scribbling a few new notes onto her outline.

“Of Hinata?”

“Of Holden,” she corrects him, shaking her head. “How melancholic you are, how distant except for one or two people you truly care about, how lonely you feel in a world so full of people.”

“You think I truly care about you two?” The suspicious look Yachi gives him at the question makes him feel inadequate, but he shouldn’t, he’s truly curious about it. He must realize this as her gaze softens before continuing.

“Well, Shouyou at least. I think. I haven’t really figured it out yet,” she admits, sighing. “You probably hate my guts though.”

“I don’t.” Kageyama doesn’t know why he says it so quickly but he doesn’t pull back, nodding to reinforce his words.

“But I’ve treated you so poorly,” Yachi argues, book closed and forgotten on her lap. “If you don’t hate me then you should.”

He thinks for a moment, remembering the glares he’s gotten from the small girl, passing looks of distrust or disapproval. The one thing that stands out is how they always seem to be punctuated with a hint of jealousy.

“It’s because you think I’ll hurt him, isn’t it?”

Yachi sits up suddenly, pushing her chair back and wincing as it hits the desk and moves slightly ahead again. “I-I,”

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” Kageyama says, holding up a hand to stop her stuttering. “But you’re right; I do truly care about him. About both of you. And I’m going to do my best to keep you from falling over that cliff.”

Yachi considers his words for a moment, seeming to let them calm her.

“You’re smarter than you look, you know,” she says, smirking slightly.

“Hey!”

“But you’re right. I didn’t want to trust you because I was afraid of how close you and Shouyou were getting. I should have tried to get to know you before judging you though, and I’m sorry.” Yachi smiles softly at him, trying to convey her apology through the pull of her lips.

“Nah, I don’t blame you,” Kageyama shrugs, trying to lift the mood in the room. “A big scary demon shows up and starts hanging around the boy you like? I wouldn’t trust me either.”

“I don’t…Shouyou and I-,” Yachi panics, searching for the right words as her face goes scarlet.

“Really, Yachi? Do you think I’m blind?” Kageyama laughs, a clean sound that feels good in his lungs.

“Just…shut up and leave me alone,” she huffs, grabbing a pillow from the bed and chucking it at his face. “Let me finish my essay.”

“Yeah, yeah. After I gave you all the answers,” he mumbles, smirking as he tosses the pillow back here it belongs.

“I’m never bringing you home with me again,” she mumbles, turning back around in her chair and lowering her head over the keyboard and typing furiously again. “I take everything I said back.”

“Sure you do,” Kageyama chuckles, settling back down on the floor with his back against the side of Yachi’s mattress.

Girls, he thinks to himself. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

***

Hinata tries to ignore Kageyama and Yachi the next day but gives up after about two hours.

“Sorry I yelled at you yesterday,” he apologizes between class periods, leaning over to whisper to Yachi. “I just got really frustrated.”

He doesn’t turn to Kageyama as to not draw attention but he knows the sentiment is meant for him also.

“Don’t worry about it,” Yachi smiles, turning pink as she sees Kageyama watching her out of the corner of her eyes. “Oh, uh, did you finish your essay?”

The two launch into a discussion about Hinata’s analysis and how ‘it has nothing to do with baseball, Shouyou, were you even listening?’ and Kageyama leans back in his seat, willing the hours to pass faster so he can stand and stretch his legs.

Sadly the hours do not move faster, and by the time lunch rolls around he feels as if his body has fused to the plastic chair and if he tries to stand up his legs will give out and crumble to dust.

After hearing about today’s menu Yachi and Hinata decide to go to the cafeteria again and surprisingly his legs stay intact as he follows them through the door behind the rest of the class heading the same place as them. They do their best to stay out of the center of the crowd to keep Kageyama from bumping into anyone so they have a clear view of the rest of the students.

The second they reach the hallway where the cafeteria is the chattering students turn left, following the scent of frying hamburgers, but they notice Terushima turning right, and Kageyama can see Hinata’s ears practically perk up.

“Shouyou,” Yachi groans, “Don’t. Please.”

Hinata seems to think for a moment, considering his options, but then he settles on a look of determination.

“Just this last time,” he says, eyes burning as he pleads. “If we don’t find anything I promise I’ll leave it alone.”

Yachi turns to Kageyama, silently asking him his thoughts and he shrugs. “If it gets him to shut up I’ll do anything.”

“Yes!” Hinata yells, punching the air. “Let’s go! Hurry up!”

Yachi and Kageyama do their best to keep up as Hinata ducks through empty hallways and turns corner after corner. After ten or so minutes, though, Yachi starts to fall behind. Kageyama reaches out to grab Hinata’s shoulder and tell him it’s time to give up, but just as they pass another corridor his blood runs cold, a familiar sensation on the back of his neck, even stronger than before.

“Stop,” he says, too quiet to be heard over the slap of shoes on the linoleum. He tries to stand still but is slowly pulled behind the two as his range of travel runs out. “Stop!”

That catches their attention; Hinata skidding to a halt and Yachi jumping three feet in the air at the boom of his voice.

“What?”

“I felt it again.”

Their eyes go wide, Yachi’s with fear and Hinata’s with triumph, but before he can gloat about being right about Terushima again his face falls.

“I…I think I feel it too,” he says, breathy and low, shivering slightly. “It’s really strong.”

“Oh god, Shouyou, are you okay?” Yachi squeaks, stepping in front of him and grabbing his arms, looking as if she’s going to faint at how green Hinata’s face is turning but he just moves his head like a dog shaking off water and smiles.

“Yeah, it just felt really weird for a sec-,”

“There!” Kageyama yells, making both of them jump this time as he peers down the hall where the feeling is strongest, catching a glimpse of a student ducking around the corner.

They don’t have to ask to know what he means, and neither is surprised when he takes off running down the hallway. Now it’s his turn to drag the other two behind him, his strides so much longer than Yachi and Hinata’s.

“Slow down!” Yachi yells, struggling to stay closer to the other two.

“We’ll lose him,” Hinata pants, “hurry up, Hitoka.”

Kageyama turns the corner just as the door to the boy’s bathroom swings shut, and he barges towards it, stopping just before the door.

“Where’d they go?” Hinata asks as he catches up, doubled over and breathing heavy.

“In here,” Kageyama answers, pressing a hand to the door, the chill of the metal against his palm tingling and telling him that they have definitely found their target.

This close the presence feels familiar, like the lingering sense of an old friend hidden beneath the age lines of a person on the street. Familiar, but not friendly.

“I can’t go in there,” Yachi gasps, leaning one hand against the wall and clutching her chest with the other.

“Then keep watch for us,” Hinata says, stepping in front of Kageyama and pushing the door open, both of them barging in together despite Yachi’s protests behind them.

Hinata shudders as the cold air of the restroom hits his face, both from the stretching metal surfaces and the presence growing stronger on their skin.

All of the stalls are empty but one, a pair of blue sneakers sticking out from underneath the closed one. They slowly step up to it, Hinata signaling to stay quiet with a finger to his lips, but all at once the presence disappears, making Kageyama panic. If he’s right, and the demon energy belongs to who he thinks it does, there’s no telling what kind of havoc they can wreak here.  

“What the-,” Hinata starts to yell as Kageyama slams his shoulder against the stall door, throwing it open just as the kid inside starts to choke, the contents of his stomach falling into the toilet bowl.

Kageyama hasn’t shown himself to anyone but Yachi and Hinata since arriving here, but he feels himself solidify in the air as he grabs the boy by the shoulders and spins him around, his eyes glazed over and consciousness hazy.

“Who are you!?” He yells, the boy blinking slowly and not registering what exactly is happening.

“Let him go!” Hinata shouts behind him.

Kageyama can’t make himself to listen though, getting more desperate by the second as the cold feeling of the other demon slips farther and farther away. His grip tightens on the boy’s uniform jacket and he feels his fingers start to elongate, his spine start to curve.

“Where did they go!? Who are you controlling?!” This kid has to know something and he was going to get it out of him no matter what.

 “Kageyama, stop it!” Hinata shouts again, voice faltering.

Kageyama tries hard not to imagine the terror on his face as he watches him slowly stretch into his demon form, black smoke emitting from his pores as his body curls and horns sprout above his black eyes.

He can’t stop. Not yet. Standing he lifts the boy off the ground and holds him out, shaking him as he asks again. “WHERE IS YOUR DEMON!?”

The kid’s eyes finally connect, the haziness disappearing from them, and he starts to scream, the sound terrible as it mixes with the rasping shriek coming from Kageyama.

He can no longer tell what Hinata is screaming from behind him, but he can feel his skin start to burn as he continues to refuse orders. He ignores it, the feeling of ropes of fire replacing the cords that bind his and Hinata’s souls together, and opens his mouth to speak again.

“WHY ARE YOU-,”

“PUT HIM DOWN!” A voice screams in front of him and small hands slam against his chest, startling him and making him drop the terrified boy back to his feet. Yachi stands between them, eyes wide and hand shaking but voice clear and strong. “Don’t touch him! And don’t disobey Shouyou! You’re going to get hurt you _idiot_!”

The boy scrambles behind them and out of the stall, stumbling as he goes, and Hinata grabs him, trying to calm him down but Kageyama barely notices any of it. A door opens behind them as Hinata ushers the kid out, probably heading towards the nurses office.

He is stunned, looking down at tiny Yachi, even smaller to him now in his true form. She stares up at him with more bravery than he has ever seen meet his empty black eyes. He expects her to yell again, to scream and curse at him and tell him how evil a creature he is and how she knew all along, but her features soften. “Are you okay?”

She must know more about his kind than he thought. She must know about what can happen to a disobedient demon, about how he was seconds away from being burned alive from the inside. He can feel the cord of flames subside inside of him and slowly he return to normal, shrinking back to human size as his horns recede and his eyes return to their midnight blue. “I’m sorry,” is all he can muster to say.

Yachi’s eyes fill with tears, turning them into a watery brown like warm melted chocolate and she throws her arms around his middle, burying her face into his chest. “Don’t scare me like that ever again,” she says, muffled against the fabric of his shirt.

He isn’t sure whether she means his demon form or almost getting himself killed but he agrees anyway.

It takes a few minutes for her tears to stop and his breathing to slow, but eventually they both calm down and she steps away, cold immediately filling the space Yachi had been warming. She wipes at her face and looks up at him again.

“You can’t be reckless like that,” she tells him, and he nods, ashamed and repentant. “You have people who care about you now. You can’t just throw that away, it’s irresponsible.”

Her words hit him like a freight train. People who care for him. He has people who _care_ for him. And he has an obligation to them to stay alive. This train of thought makes a new feeling fill his chest, like the first blossom on a tree sapling, unknown yet promising many more to come.

This time it’s Kageyama who wraps his arms around the small girl. She fits under his arms perfectly, and she wriggles around to free her arms and hug him back.

And suddenly the soft feeling in his chest is replaced by something more solid, less cherry blossom and more spicy cinnamon, another cord thickening around his heart.

The two spring apart, looking at each other in shock. She felt it too. Of course she did; the first twinge of their bond. The first hint that they are bound together in the same way he and Hinata are.

With the feeling comes a realization; loving one human is unfortunate, loving another is dangerous, and loving two at the same time is just downright idiotic, but Kageyama had never been one to heed warnings.


	6. Chapter 6

The park was surprisingly empty for such a nice spring Saturday, the gentle sun only warming about four other small groups of people besides Yachi, Hinata, and Kageyama, all of them spread far apart on the new grass.

Yachi thought she probably knew the reason, thinking back to the news report Kiyoko had read to them in homeroom earlier that week.

She had woken that morning with an odd feeling in her stomach, though she had chosen to ignore it since she hadn’t felt exactly well since the incident in the bathroom a few days before. She and Kageyama had both felt that sudden warmth in their chest and neither could look the other in the eye anymore. Adding that to the weird twisting in her stomach every time they did manage to make eye contact made every moment together embarrassing.

She had dressed quickly, brushing her hair down lazily instead of pulling it into her normal side ponytail and made her way to school, stopping at Hinata’s house as usual. The odd feeling only intensified when they got there, almost everyone sitting calmly in their seats waiting for class to start instead of talking loudly as always. It was like a gray cloud had formed over all of their heads, telling them to keep quiet and wait for the metaphorical hammer to drop.

And it did, when Kiyoko walked in with her fist clenched around a crinkled paper and eyes that betrayed the fact she’d been crying. It was odd to see that kind of emotion on her face, and silence immediately fell over the already silent classroom.

“School will be cancelled today and tomorrow due to an accident within the staff,” she told them, voice wavering slightly. Hands shot up all around and she sighed, waving them away and smoothing out the paper she had been holding on the desk. “All I can tell you is what’s on this official report from the police and the principal.”

“Police!?’

“Is everyone okay!?”

“What happened!?”                               

The curtain of gloom was lifted as fear made its way around the room, causing everyone to blurt out the first questions that came to mind as Kiyoko tried to quiet them all back down. Yachi felt sick, a wave of nausea hitting her as she watched her friends panic, ignoring the intensity in Kageyama’s eyes as he waited for Kiyoko to continue.

“Mr. Takeda was found dead in his office early this morning. Nothing has been determined yet, and police haven’t ruled it as a homicide or an accident but the principal wants everyone to stay home while we figure everything out.” Yachi’s skin went cold as the rest of the class let out a collective gasp.

Mr. Takeda wasn’t particularly popular with the students; a quirky man with big round glasses, a soft voice and an even softer smile. He taught for the first years but most of them made fun of him and called him names behind his back though he thankfully never caught on. Yachi had found herself telling a few students to take it easy on him in the past when she had heard them laughing about him in the halls, her hands shaking and voice squeaking but still doing her best.

She wasn’t very close with the man but she was one of the only students to speak with him outside of his classes. She felt comfortable talking to him, both of them easily frightened and yet overly friendly. He had showed her his flower gardens he tended to on the roof, which was where he usually disappeared to when he wasn’t teaching. She had even brought him different seeds from her grandmother’s flower shop when her family went to visit.

Mr. Takeda was so nice that she couldn’t think of a single reason anyone would want to hurt him.

She looked over towards Hinata, whose eyes were fixed on the person behind her. Turning slightly Yachi saw Kageyama gripping his desk so tightly the wood seemed close to splintering. There was a faint acidic taste in the back of her throat she thought must have been from him, but she couldn’t tell exactly what it meant.

“School will resume normally on Thursday and I have fliers for you all on staying safe and being aware of your surroundings in the event there is a dangerous person around. I suggest using the buddy system for a while.”

Miss Kiyoko began walking around the room, handing out papers that looked as if she had just typed them up herself with bullet points of helpful safety information. In situations like these she showed her protective side to her students, and so no one argued when she gave advice since it was almost always for their own good.

Yachi had that paper in the back pocket of her jeans right now, looking out at the soccer field and knowing that this mystery murder was the reason for its emptiness. She felt guilty, having ignored one of the top points saying to stay close to home, but she had Hinata and Kageyama with her, and for some reason she didn’t feel like the danger extended outside of the school.

Hinata was scribbling in his notebook a few feet away from her, lying on his stomach on the big picnic blanket she had brought along. For once he was actually doing work instead of planning out pranks since the war had settled down after the news about Mr. Takeda. Hinata had even quit his talk about Terushima being a demon master as promised, or anything about Terushima at all, since he didn’t want to upset her anymore than he knew she already was. He had even made _her_ lunch for once yesterday, making her almost cry in front of all of their friends. He could be really sweet sometimes. She liked that about him.

Kageyama sits absentmindedly pulling grass from where it pokes up on the edge of the blanket, piling it up in little green mounds and then sweeping them back to where they came from. He hasn’t spoken much in the last few days, especially not to her, and she was mildly curious of what he was thinking about. She figures he must know something more about all of this than they do but she isn’t sure if she wants to know what.

Yachi looks back down at the drawing she had been working on; a simple landscape of the sparse park before them, a playground somewhere far in the distance, and decides to add in some flowers to fill the empty spaces.

“Hey, Shouyou, what’s your favorite flower?” She asks, looking at the array of colored pencils before her, unable to decide what kind she wants to draw.

“Huh?” He mumbles, barely looking up from his notebook, face scrunched together as he works on a practice equation. “Uh, I don’t know.”

“Just say whatever kind pops in your head,” she pushes, smiling at the cute way he pokes his tongue out of the side of his mouth when he thinks.

“I can’t think of any right now, Hitoka. I have derivatives on the brain,” he shakes his head, tapping his pencil against his forehead and still not looking up. “Ask Kageyama.”

“Wha-??” They both say, heads swiveling and eyes locking for a split second before they both look away, cheeks burning. The fluttery feeling returns to Yachi’s stomach, embarrassment mixing with the sandwich she had for lunch.

“I’ll just, uh, put in some daisies,” she mutters, picking up the pale yellow pencil and bowing her head over the paper, letting her hair cover her face.

Kageyama goes back to pulling up grass but she can feel his jittery anxiousness in her chest, making her legs shake.

She’s halfway through outlining a patch of the small yellow flowers when Hinata puts down his pencil with a sigh and shoves the notebook away from him. Yachi sees from the corner of her eye as he reaches into the basket of food they brought and pulls out a juice box. He stabs the straw into the top and lifts his head, watching her and Kageyama avoid each other by pretending to be absorbed in their individual tasks.

“Alright, what’s up with you two?”

The tip of Yachi’s pencil snaps against her paper and Kageyama’s fist freezes around a clump of grass, her heart beating fast enough for two.

“What do you mean?” Kageyama asks, trying to feint normalcy but keeping his tone too even to be casual for him.

“You haven’t spoken to each other in days,” Hinata explains, finishing his juice box with a slurping sound and setting it down on the blanket. “No secret glares or anything. Do you really hate each other _that_ much?” He looks so sad, as if his two best friends not getting along is the most tragic thing his little heart can imagine. Yachi feels a pull in her chest.

“Of course not,” she tells him, trying to smile but still avoiding looking in Kageyama’s direction. “Everything is fine.”

“No, it’s definitely been weird between you ever since the bathroom thing,” he argues, sitting up and folding his arms to show he isn’t buying it. “And I keep getting these weird feelings in my stomach from Kage-,”

“Hey! Isn’t that your friend over there?” Kageyama interrupts, cutting Hinata off, his face a brighter shade of pink than Yachi thought was possible. She’s thankful, anyway, Hinata’s attention shifting immediately as he catches sight of the boy Kageyama points to across the field alone by the duck pond.

“It’s Tanaka! He must’ve gotten better. Hey, Tanaka!” He yells, waving his arms trying to get the boy’s attention, conversation completely forgotten.

Kageyama lets out a heavy sigh and turns to Yachi, neither of them looking away this time, and shrugs. It’s so dumb, she realizes, this tiptoeing around each other and trying not to make things awkward when avoiding it all in the first place is what made it awkward. She can’t help but giggle now. They’re friends, right?

Kageyama smiles back, a very small smile, and the twisting feeling returns, but now she would describe it like a good twist, more like butterflies.

“Tanakaaa!” Hinata continues yelling, getting louder and louder by the second.

Finally the boy’s head whips around and he waves back. Tanaka stands and tosses the rest of the bread he’s holding towards the ducks before starting to jog towards them. 

“Hey, guys,” he beams, plopping down dangerously close to Kageyama on the blanket. Yachi goes stiff, trying not to look terrified, and Hinata suppresses a giggle at how big Kageyama’s eyes are. “What’s up?”

“Homework,” Hinata grumbles, pointing a thumb at his math notes still open to his side. “What about you?”

“Came to feed the ducks,” he shrugs. “Wanted some fresh air I guess.”

“Feeding the ducks?” Hinata laughs, and Yachi shoots him her best ‘don’t be rude’ face, but he ignores her. “That’s totally not like you at all.”

“Well,” Tanaka shrugs, reaching down and pulling up grass from the same spot Kageyama had been moments before. “I wanted to do something calming.” Hinata glances over at Yachi, locking eyes for a moment and silently telling each other that something seems off, but neither comments on it.

“It’s dangerous to go out alone right now,” Yachi tells him, still not quite believing in the threat. “Didn’t you hear about Mr. Takeda?”

“Oh, yeah,” he answers, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s terrible. But I figured the park was public enough to be safe, you know? And I only came alone because Yuu still has a fever.”

“You can hang out with us!” Hinata says, clapping Tanaka on the back and giving Kageyama a chance to scoot away from him and closer to Yachi without drawing attention.

She feels a cold sensation coming from him, but not an empty cold, more like a flipside of the pillow on a summer night kind of cold.

“How are you feeling, by the way?” Hinata asks, happy to do something else besides homework.

“Better!” He laughs, and Yachi offers him the basket of snacks. He takes out a pack of powdered donuts and hands it back. “Did I miss much in class?”

“No not really,” she tells him. “The teachers have been taking it really slow since so many students have been getting sick. You won’t have much work to make up.”

“Sweet,” he says through a mouthful of donut, powdered sugar dusted across his lips. “You guys are so lucky you haven’t caught it though. God, that flu was tough as shit.”

Some of the first kids to get sick were finally starting to return to class, but some were still falling ill and no one was sure when everything would go back to normal.

“Yeah that’s weird,” Hinata replies, pulling out another juice box. “Almost everyone has gotten it by now. I guess it’s just because Yachi has been badgering me to keep washing my hands.”

“You’re lucky you have me,” she teases, and he sticks his tongue out at her.

The boys start discussing some important sports game that had come on the night before and Yachi returns to her drawing, deciding to add some ducks wandering the empty field near the pond but something nags at the back of her mind.

It was true that both she and Hinata had been some of the only students not affected by this weird flu out outbreak in the school; however she hadn’t given too much thought until now. Almost their whole lunch group had gotten it to some degree even though she had prodded them all to be careful, and the two of them hadn’t done anything special except wash their hands more than usual. Yet they had stayed healthy all this time… them and Terushima.

Her blood runs cold, a sudden possibility chilling her from the inside; she can see Kageyama’s head swivel around in her direction from her peripheral vision as he feels it too. Maybe the reason they weren’t affected had something to do with Kageyama, and maybe the reason Terushima was still fine was something similar. Maybe Hinata was right all along.

They stay in the park a few more hours until the breeze turns chilly and Tanaka’s sister calls to tell him to come home, but even when they’re in the clear Yachi doesn’t bring up her theory. She thinks Kageyama can sense it, or at least knows that she’s thinking about something important even if he doesn’t bring it to attention. She’s glad though, she doesn’t want to bring it up to Hinata until she’s sure she’s right, so she keeps the conversation casual about a new movie coming out next week until they say goodbye and she gets home.

Yachi barely says hello to her parents before heading into her room and firing up her laptop, cracking her knuckles in a theatrical way before opening up Google. She starts to type in “demon possessions” into the search bar, her finger hovering over the enter key, but considering the possible contents of that search she erases it and opens a new incognito tab. Her parents didn’t monitor her online but you could never be too careful with these things.

With a veil of safety she reenters her search and opens the first credible looking source that appears: **Signs That Might Mean Someone You Know is Possessed by a Demon.** Good enough.

The page that pops up is hard to look at; a black background and thin red font that almost blends together, plus big headings laid over copy and paste pentagrams. Most of the page is taken up by pictures of the brothers from Supernatural, both of them sporting completely black eyes and rugged facial expressions. Yachi has never clicked out of something so fast.

She’s more careful with her next selection, clicking on something simply titled as **Signs of Demon Possession.**

The article starts off with silly things such as speaking in tongues and avoiding touching crosses, but lower down it starts to talk about the process of exorcisms, and below that side effects of exorcisms. After a few shots from The Exorcist and The Conjuring there’s a paragraph called after effects. Yachi skims it, her eyes catching on a particular line near the middle.

“Immediately after being exorcised the victim often becomes sick and vomits. Whether this is caused by the demon exiting through the esophagus or simple nausea has not been determined, but the effects can last several days depending on the power of the demon and resemble a particularly strong case of the flu. The victim also can seem less themselves for the following weeks and show reduced appetite and become tired more easily. This could be an effect of the demon strengthening their body during the possession and using up more energy than the victim’s body can produce.”

Yachi feels like someone punched her in the stomach, or as close as you can feel to that when you’ve never actually been punched in the stomach. If this is true then it suggests that there’s some demon hopping around from student to student, looking for who knows what. Not only a demon, but one strong enough to make the students sick for over a week afterwards. She wonders if Kageyama knows all of this already, if this is why he reacted so strongly to the sick boy in the bathroom. She wonders if he’s told Hinata anything.

She digs deeper and deeper, reading the same information on several different sites before truly convincing herself that this must be the truth. By then the sun had long since set, the only light being the computer screen shining on her no doubt terrified face. Somewhere along the way she finds a paragraph that makes her stomach flip; a short snippet at the bottom of a blog entry titled **How to Kill a Demon.** She doesn’t want to read it, feeling like it would be some sort of breach of Kageyama’s trust, but her curiosity gets the better of her.

About halfway through she starts to feel sick, imagining Kageyama’s soul turning to ash like the paragraph describes. Without her noticing, tears prick at the edges of her eyes. She hopes beyond hope that she’ll never need to use this information and clicks out of the page.

The only thing that doesn’t quite add up is why she, Hinata, and Terushima were seemingly unaffected. Another idea wriggles itself into her mind not long after this thought. A demon couldn’t possess its own master unless the circle used to summon them was broken and their bond dispelled, so that must mean another demon couldn’t posses someone already tied to a demon, right? Kageyama’s connection to them must be the thing keeping them safe, and the other demon must already know that to not have come after them.

As for Terushima, the only thing coming to mind was that Hinata must be right; he must be a demon master just like them.

She wasn’t sure what scared her more, the fact that she had trusted so strongly that Terushima couldn’t be involved with such a thing or the fact that whatever demon he summoned must be very powerful and in it for something much bigger than a prank war between two teenage boys. She didn’t want to admit any of it, or to even try to imagine what their end goal must be, but she knew she had to do something about it.

But not alone.

She reaches for her cell phone and clicks on the little picture of her and Hinata at the beach last summer and holds it up to her ear, listening to the familiar buzzing ring.

“Hitoka?” Hinata’s groggy voice answers. “Do you know what time it is?”

She didn’t, but glancing at the clock in the bottom corner of her laptop screen she realizes she definitely got carried away in her research.

“Yeah, sorry,” she whispers, not wanting to wake her parents who were definitely asleep in the next room. “But I’ve been reading some things-,”

“It’s _2am_ , Hitoka,” Hinata groans, the phone speaker making a staticky sound as he rolls over. “Why are you reading right now? All books should be banned after eight o’clock, like a special bookworm bedtime or something.”

“Shouyou, listen for a second,” she tells him, the serious tone to her voice finally reaching him as his tired groans stop and she hears what sounds like him sitting up.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I owe you an apology.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Shouyou, listen for a second.”

Yachi’s voice comes clear and serious through the phone and Hinata bolts up in bed, sensing that something must be wrong. Kageyama stirs from his spot in the desk chair across the room where he’s listening to Hinata’s iPod, taking one of the earbuds out of his ear and cocking his head to the side.

“What’s wrong?” Hinata asks, shooting a confused expression in Kageyama’s direction.

“I think I owe you an apology.”

The lightheadedness from sitting up too fast and the grogginess from being woken up so abruptly catch up to him. Hinata shakes his head, pretending to loosen the cobwebs from his brain.

“Whoa, hold on a second you aren’t making any sense. And aren’t you the one always yelling at me for not going to bed on time?”

“It was an accident, okay?” She sighs, shuffling the phone and probably moving it to her other ear. “I got carried away. But anyway, I found some things out that I think you need to know about.”

“If this is about like, the Edo Period or something I swear I’m going to hang up on you.” Hinata leans over and flips the lamp on, pushing his clarinet case out of the way to reach it.

Kageyama puts the iPod down and stands, stepping up to the end of the bed in two quick strides and sitting down, eyebrows knit in concern and curiosity.

“No, no,” she says, the sound of keyboard tapping mixing with her voice. “Though we do have a test on that coming up soon. But this is more important. I’ve been reading about demon possessions.”

“What? Why?”

“Okay, this is where the apology comes in,” she tells him, pausing to take a deep breath. “I think you might be right about Yuuji.”

Hinata’s heart soars, all remnants of sleep disappearing, but he tries not to overreact.

“Really?” He expects Kageyama to roll his eyes or snort, knowing that he can hear the conversation clearly, but he just scowls harder, his expression becoming difficult to read.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about how odd Tanaka was acting today,” she continues, voice hushed but almost frantic. “He was so quiet, you know? So calm. So I started thinking about how weird the whole flu thing in general was and how we’re some of the only ones not to have gotten sick but then I realized that-,”

“Terushima hasn’t gotten sick either,” Hinata finishes, looking up wide eyed at Kageyama who quickly turns his head away. “Hitoka, you’re a genius. What else did you find?”

“I dug around a bit for some stuff about possessions and it was mostly weird blogs with no basis but eventually I found something credible and,” she pauses, and Hinata feels like he’s going to burst while waiting for her to speak again. “It said that hosts often get sick after a demon leaves their body, showing symptoms similar to the flu. The stronger the demon the stronger the symptoms. And that they can even seem lethargic or not entirely like themselves.”

“So you think Tanaka and everyone else was possessed and then the demon left them?” Hinata continues staring at Kageyama, but he continues to avoid eye contact, which makes him wonder what it is that’s bothering him so much.

“Yes. And I think that’s why we haven’t got sick. Because it’s not the flu at all and we can’t be affected since we’re tied to Kageyama.”

“And since Terushima isn’t sick either he must be connected to a demon to. Or _the_ demon. The really powerful one possessing everyone in the school,” Hinata says, nodding as things click together in his head. “Shit.”

“This is really scary, Shouyou,” Yachi whispers, and for a moment he feels ashamed of his excitement, though the moment quickly passes and he perks up.

“Yeah it is, definitely, but think about it, Hitoka,” he says, imagining her face on the other end of the line, exasperated already from where she knows he’s going with this. “If we confront him then it’ll be like a final showdown. One last fight to bring everything to a close.”

“Shouyou-,”

“Just like I superhero movies! I’ll be Captain America and he’ll be Iron Man. Except less cool, obviously.”

“I don’t think it’s going to work like that,” Yachi tells him, sounding as if the time is finally catching up to her. “Let’s just think about it before we do anything, okay?”

“Alright. Go to sleep, Hitoka. We can’t both fall asleep in class on Monday.”

“Talk to you tomorrow,” she yawns, letting out a cute little squeak at the end. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” Hinata replies, hanging up the phone and dropping it on the blankets.

He looks up at Kageyama whose back is still turned and sighs, sensing in the pit of his stomach that something is upsetting him; his problem is that he doesn’t have Yachi’s tact to ask about it.

“So,” he blurts out, rubbing the back of his neck. “What do you think about all of this, Kageyama? You were listening, right? Is she right?”

He turns slowly, his scowl replaced by a frown, sadder than Hinata is used to seeing. “Yeah, I was listening,” he says, more words sitting visibly on his lips but he holds them back. “And yeah, she’s right. All of that about the flu symptoms and stuff is all true.”

“So you think it’s Terushima?” Hinata sits forward expectantly, excitement growing in his chest again.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s him you need to be worried about.”

“What do you mean?”

Kageyama sucks in a deep breath and looks away as if preparing himself before continuing. “For a demon to be strong enough to hop between this many hosts I’m not sure if it’s connected to a master.”

“A demon without a master? Can that even happen?” Hinata looks to Kageyama confused, too much information entering his head in such a short time.

“It can,” he breathes, dropping his eyes to the floor, the lamp casting a long shadow across his face. “It’s not common and it’s not…good, but it can happen.”

“How?”

Kageyama sits back up suddenly, almost smacking into Hinata who hadn’t realized he’d leaned forward so far. “It’s just bad, okay? People get hurt. But listen, all demons aren’t the same, okay? They aren’t all…friendly. Actually, _most_ of them aren’t.”

Hinata snorts and leans back against his headboard. “Yeah, neither are you.”

“No, Hinata, listen.” The seriousness of his tone stops Hinata mid eye roll, and a feeling of déjà vu from his talk with Yachi washes over him. “Compared to them I’m a fucking _kitten_. You have no idea how much demons despise humans.”

“Why do they hate us so much?” He asks, finally letting the thickness of the air and the intensity of Kageyama’s face tell him that this is important. “What have we done?”

“Are you kidding? You _enslave_ us. I’m literally bound to you right now until you decide I’ve done your bidding long enough and let me go.”

“But-,”

“Look,” Kageyama cuts him off, waving his hand to stop his retort. “I’m not bitter, I swear, but most of us are. Some of us despise getting summoned and try their best to get out of it, which isn’t good for anyone involved. Some even _try_ to get summoned _just_ so they can turn on their master.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Hinata feels nauseous at the thought, and guilty for bringing Kageyama here in the first place. Does he secretly hate him and Yachi? He wouldn’t blame him if he did.

“Because this isn’t going to be how you’re imagining. This has suddenly gotten so much bigger than you and Terushima, and Yachi is right, you need to think about everything you do from now on carefully before drawing attention to yourself. If we’re lucky the other demon doesn’t know about us yet, or at least hasn’t pinned you two down individually but that’s a long shot to hope for. You guys might be in real danger right now.”

Hinata listens, disturbed. Everything suddenly came crashing down around him, the shards catching in his throat from the shattered image he’d been building of this friendship with Kageyama and Yachi and how much fun they were all having together. His world that was nothing but pale white clouds and sunshine is now stark terror and the void of unknown. He wants to feel sick but he just feels cold.

“Do you think Terushima is in trouble too?” Hinata speaks so softly he’s not sure if Kageyama catches it.

 “Yes. Probably,” Kageyama answers, each syllable like a fist on Hinata’s chest.

They’re silent for a while, he’s not sure how long, but among the flurry of thoughts and fears swirling like a sandstorm slowly eroding away at his over stimulated brain one thing sticks out among the mess.

“Thank you,” he whispers, making Kageyama’s head snap up.

“What?”

“Thank you…for not being one of the evil ones. I guess I was lucky to have summoned you.”

The yellow light casts a ghastly color on Kageyama’s face, but even still Hinata swears he can see the small hint of a blush on his cheeks.

“I don’t think that.”

“No, really. I mean it,” he continues, nodding for emphasis but stopping himself from reaching out to grasp Kageyama’s hand. “You could’ve tried to hurt us, could’ve hated my guts, and you probably should, but you don’t. I think.”

“I don’t,” Kageyama breathes, and Hinata gives him a small halfhearted smile.

“I’m just really glad I summoned you. Not only because of all those things but because I honestly feel like we’re friends and not a master and subject, and that makes me happy.”

Kageyama gulps loudly, the color appearing on his face this time an unmistakable scarlet. His eyes flash, so many emotions crossing his expression in a short span of time, and all of them meshing together in Hinata’s chest. Fear, joy, embarrassment, relief. Too many to pin them all down.

“Get some sleep,” he says when he finally gets his face back to its usual stony glare. “It’s late.”

“Alright,” Hinata nods, deciding not to push it. “Night.”

Kageyama gets up from the bed and settles back into the desk chair, replacing the earbuds he’d removed before, and Hinata flips the switch of the lamp again, bathing the room in darkness. His head feels heavy as it hits the pillow, his thoughts weighing it down into cotton softness and immediately making his eyes heavy.

Sleep comes quickly, with the sun barely peaking up over the horizon like the remnants of an ember, or the beginnings of a flame, but just before his eyes close completely Hinata wonders if some part of him, however large it may be, thinks of Kageyama as more than just a friend. More than just a demon, more than just some creature whose path happened to cross with his own, and, on a less likely note, if maybe Kageyama feels the same way.

***

Monday dawns bright and sunny; spring storms gone and the cool weather melting into something thicker and warmer, summer just on the cusp of blooming into a big beautifully miserable flower.

Hinata wakes early, sunlight splaying across his eyes, but a sense of dread washes over him as he sits up, a realization of what awaits them at school.

Sunday was tense, mostly sitting in silence after Kageyama told Yachi the same things he had talked about in the early morning hours after her phone call; silence that only made the three of them come up empty handed for a plan of action. The best thing to do, they decided, was lay low and try to figure things out as they unfolded.

That was going to be hard, Hinata realized, as they stepped through the school doors that morning and the hair on his arms stood up. Something was different today, something he couldn’t put his finger on, something more than the general grief hanging over the student body, and he knew somehow that laying low was not going to be an option for them much longer.

“Aren’t you going to eat, Shouyou? You love meat buns,” Yachi says from across the lunch table, pulling him out of his thoughts and his eyes away from where they were easily resting on the curve of Kageyama’s eyebrows over his carefully constructed scowl.

“Huh? Oh,” he mutters, looking down at the meat bun in his hand with one small bite taken from the side. “I’m not very hungry.”

He sets the bun back on his tray and leans back, ignoring the way Yachi sighs and shakes her head.

“You didn’t eat breakfast either. You should at least _try_ to eat something so you don’t feel sick.”

But he already does feel sick; he’s felt sick all day and it’s  getting worse, and judging by the way Yachi pushes her spoon absentmindedly around in circles in her soup bowl she felt the same.

“What about you, Hitoka?”

“What?”  She drops the spoon, broth and plastic clattering onto the table top. “Oh _shoot_.”

“You feel it too don’t you,” he whispers, leaning forward over the table as Yachi wipes the mess up. “You feel on edge for no reason, right? You too, Kageyama. You can’t tell me you don’t feel it.”

Kageyama looks for a moment as if he didn’t hear the question, and Hinata opens his mouth to ask it again but he turns, his eyes darker and deeper than usual.

“Yeah, I feel it,” he sighs, not quite meeting either of their eyes. “I feel it stronger than it’s been before. It’s almost suffocating, and you guys are probably only getting a fraction of it through me.”

“What is it?” Yachi asks, already knowing the answer and wringing her hands in a motion similar to how Hinata’s stomach feels.

“The demon presence. It’s so strong I,” he pauses, dropping his eyes to the table.

Hinata wants to reach out and lay his hand over Kageyama’s on the table, to try and give some semblance of comfort to his friend that he can pass off as bravery in the face of fear, but Yachi beats him to it, her tiny hand covering his as best it can.

Kageyama takes a deep breath before continuing, moving his thumb to rest easily over Yachi’s. “It’s so strong I don’t think I’ll be able to protect you two if something goes wrong.”

“Then we’ll just have to make sure nothing goes wrong,” Hinata says, forcing a smile but knowing it comes out halfhearted.

He eyes his friends’ hands, but surprisingly a pang of warmth hits him instead of a pang of jealousy. He’s happy they’re getting along and he hopes he can be a part of it, as silly as that may sound.

“Yeah,” Yachi agrees, putting out a much better attempt at a smile than he could muster. “We’ll just be super careful and vigilant.”

Kageyama nods even though he’s still clearly not convinced, but they take it anyway, turning back to their food with a bit more cheer than before. Hinata picks his meat bun back up, but just as he goes to take a bite he sees a familiar blond head making its way through the crowd of students to the back door of the cafeteria, slipping easily out and into the hallway.

“Ah, shit, you guys.”

“What is it?” Kageyama’s head whips around, suddenly alert, and Hinata drops his food onto the tray again.

“Terushima just got up and left again. Alone.”

Yachi gulps and closes her eyes as if preparing herself for what they’re about to do. Kageyama watches the still swinging cafeteria door with narrowed eyes and Hinata stands up.

“Let’s get this over with once and for all,” he tells them, nodding sternly when they both meet his eyes. “We’ll figure out the truth and be done with this mess. Let’s go.”

He picks up his tray and heads to the trash, waiting for the other two to catch up before he starts pushing his way through the crowd, careful to work with Yachi to keep Kageyama from bumping into anyone. The air is thick when they step into the hallway; Yachi grabs for his hand and squeezes it before they continue, her other one resting again in Kageyama’s.

“It’s coming from that way,” Kageyama says, pointing down one of the hallways and pulling them behind him.

They creep slowly, trying not to draw any attention and careful not to make a sound in the empty corridors even though most of the school is outside enjoying the budding heat. The farther they get the farther the sick feeling spreads across their skin, making their hands start to shake.

Kageyama stops a few times, thinking hard with those stone cold indigo eyes and changes their direction until finally they stop at a corner. Hinata isn’t sure how he doesn’t puke as the feeling multiplies tenfold and he sways on his feet, Yachi’s hand gripping his so tight he’s sure she’s cutting off the blood flow.

“What’re you-,”

“Shhh,” Kageyama hisses, clamping a hand over Hinata’s mouth and shaking his head to tell him not to speak, hands cold against Hinata’s burning face.

He lets go and motions for the two of them to peek around the corner, all three heads stacking on top of each other with Hinata in the middle, doing their best to look without being seen.

Terushima stands alone in the hallway, facing a long set of windows across from a row of empty classrooms looking as if he’d been crying, eyes puffy and red.

“Yuuji,” Yachi whispers but doesn’t move, curiosity and fear keeping her rooted to the spot.

“What’s he doing?” Hinata asks, looking up at Kageyama slightly but doing his best to keep his eyes trained on Terushima.

Kageyama just hushes them again and they keep watching, waiting for something to happen. Terushima does nothing out of the ordinary, just clutches the window sill with white knuckles and stares through the windows down to the group of students far below.

Hinata starts to stir a few minutes later, his legs tired and mind restless, but Kageyama grabs his shoulder, and when he looks up to ask what the big deal is he sees fear flash in Kageyama’s eyes. Real, cold, fear; an expression he’s never truly seen the demon show before. His stomach lurches just as Yachi squeaks, and he turns just in time to see the largest man he’s ever laid eyes on materialize behind Terushima.

The air immediately turns cold, solidifying to something like gelatin before them, struggling to enter their lungs. Terushima turns around suddenly, gasping when he’s met with a broad chest, his eyes traveling slowly up to see the imposing face attached to it. His thick gulp sends reverberations through the viscous air, a silent prayer for help, but the three of them are rooted to the spot, helpless to do anything but watch.

“Terushima Yuuji,” the man says, voice reverberating off of every surface, knocking around in Hinata’s ribcage.

“Wh-what?” Terushima stutters, swaying on his feet and almost falling backwards.

“You are a proper vessel,” the man continues, and Hinata slowly realizes that the man is no man at all, but the demon they had been so afraid of encountering. He tries to listen closely but the sound is so loud against his eardrums, bouncing and stretching them until he’s afraid they’ll burst. “Grant me access to your body so I may test the merit of your soul.”

“Excuse me?” Terushima backs up, hands finding the glass windows as he flattens his back against them, trying to distance himself from the demon. “I d-don’t know who you are but this isn’t funny.”

“Terushima Yuuji,” he repeats, making Terushima wince. “I have seen your heart and the mundane desires that lie within it. Join me and they will be granted to you.”

“Wh-,”

“Academic excellence, athletic prowess, fortune, the same things all humans believe they need. I can give them to you if you submit to me.”

The air grows warmer slightly, and Terushima’s wobbling legs begin to steady, his shoulder going slack and eyes falling closed as if in a trance. Hinata wants to help, to warn him against it, but the vice around his heart tightens and his voice is lost in his throat.

“He’s subduing him,” Kageyama whispers, digging a hand into Hinata’s shoulder. “He’s weakening his senses so he can take him over. How did he get this _strong_?”

“Everything, along with the young girl you desire. The one you see in your dreams and memories just out of your reach. Yachi Hitoka will be yours if my quest succeeds.”

Hinata’s lungs cease their movement, all air sucked out of his body and shriveling them inside the empty cavity in his chest. Yachi. He’s going to hurt Yachi unless they stop him. He hears a squeak below him and drops his gaze, finding Yachi covering her mouth with both hands as tears that had been sitting on her lashes begin to fall.

Terushima’s head drops limply like a ragdoll and the demon’s face breaks out into a huge twisted smile.

“Good boy,” he breathes, reaching his hand forward and placing it just over Terushima’s heart.

“Ushijima!” At some point Kageyama had let go of Hinata, springing out into the center of the hallway entrance and pointing a long arm at the demon, fear in his eyes replaced by unwavering resolve. “Let him go.”

“Kageyama?” The demon, Ushijima, turns, stepping away from Terushima and narrowing his eyes but otherwise showing no hint of emotion. “So it was you I’ve been sensing? Makes sense since your presence was so weak.”

“I should’ve known it was you since it reeked of rot and overused cliché’s.”

If the words affect Ushijima at all he doesn’t show it, his face even more cold and expressionless than before if that’s possible.

“What a charming reunion,” he says, that booming voice grating against Hinata’s tender ears. “You came just in time to see me succeed.”

“Succeed at what?” Kageyama’s fists are curled at his sides, and Hinata expects Ushijima to see through his attempts to gain information easily but he just smiles and opens his arms.

“First, to gain complete control over my form in this world by taking this boy’s soul,” he says, gesturing back to Terushima, lips lifting slightly at the corner and sending a shiver down Hinata’s spine. “And then to meld the two halves of the world, to bring demons and humans into the same setting and let the true masters prevail as it always should have been.”

“Do you have any idea what that will do?” Kageyama asks, stepping forward and drawing Ushijima’s eyes away from the corner where Hinata and Yachi still stand frozen, gesturing vaguely behind him to tell them to run but neither obliges. They may be terrified but they refuse to abandon him. “Demons will destroy the human world, will destroy _humans_ , nothing will be left!”

“Exactly. What a pretty picture it paints don’t you think?”

“No. The balance of power is too uneven, _that’s_ why things are the way they are,” Kageyama says through gritted teeth, wiping the hint of a smile from Ushijima’s face and replacing it with a deep scowl, twisted and inhuman.

“Either join me, Kageyama, or get out of my way,” he spits, outstretching a hand for Kageyama to take but he just scoffs.

“I’d never join you.”

“So be it.”

In a flash Ushijima’s hand is back over Terushima’s chest, pulling back like a spring loaded bullet, ready to shoot forward. Before Hinata can register his movements he is in Terushima’s place, the other boy shoved to the side, and the demon’s hand is deep in his chest.

It doesn’t hurt the way he thinks it should, feeling instead like a flame gently lapping at his skin. It doesn’t hurt until Ushijima smirks, shock never manifesting itself on his face, and tightens his fingers around Hinata’s heart.

He screams, and it mixes with low bellow of Ushijima’s laughter, morphing into some twisted show of joy and agony.

“What a feisty one,” he says, almost cooing, the smell of rot Kageyama had mentioned filling his nostrils. “You’ll make a strong vessel.”

“Shouyou!” Yachi and Kageyama scream to his side, terror in the cadence of their voices, and he barely has time to turn toward the sound before Ushijima’s face melts to anger, an almost black flame seeming to engulf him and radiate from his body.

“You’ve already been claimed,” he growls, fingers tracing over the vice on Hinata’s heart. “You’re useless to me.”

The last thing Hinata sees is Kageyama running towards him, screaming something as Yachi follows close behind before the world spins and he feels wind against his cheeks along with the shattering of glass against his back.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The world is contradicting itself; creatures appearing that should not exist although she knew all along they did, the hammer dropping on a situation she knew was bound to collapse but was too blinded by hope and something that could almost be called love but is mostly just cowardice.

Time races faster than Yachi’s eyes can follow and slowly crawls forward with bloodied fingers against unyielding pavement. Everything happens so quickly, and then as if in slow motion at the same time.

Hinata is by her side, his presence the only thing keeping the breath coming in and out of her lungs, and then suddenly he is in that man’s arms, the demon that had been holding the other boy she cares so deeply for but never in the same way. Then without any kind of warning Hinata is thrown away, flying so slowly she has time to take in every detail of the terror on his face. The classroom window he hits shatters like so many deadly raindrops behind him, singing their song of peril against the floor.

She doesn’t even realize she’s moved until she feels the crunch of glass beneath her shoes and her face is inches away from a broad chest and the smell of rotting meat. She wants to look up, to see this monster and understand everything they’re up against, but Kageyama appears back beside her, Terushima slung over his shoulder, and grabs her arm.

“Come on, Hitoka!” He yells, dragging her away.

His touch is like a splash of cold on her face, waking her up and dropping a film of reality over the situation she didn’t want to believe was real. Nodding she turns away from Ushijima and lets Kageyama pull her into the classroom, slamming the door behind them.

Kageyama drops Terushima somewhere near Hinata, bending over the injured boy and whispering a string of curses under his breath.

“Is he okay?” She whispers, dropping next to them and swallowing hard before looking down, her heart stopping at the sight of the deep gash on Hinata’s forehead.

“Keep him out of here,” Kageyama replies between his frantic mumbling, not looking at her directly. “Block the door.”

 “Oh god, okay, think, Hitoka,” she says to herself, standing back up and surveying the classroom, eyes settling on the teacher’s desk near the front. “Perfect.”

She runs to it, pushing with all her might until it makes an awful metal scraping sound against the linoleum, not stopping until it blocks the door they just came through. She stacks a few smaller desks on top before she realizes the classroom window is wide open, jagged shards of glass still clinging to the wide frame.

With fear increasing inside her Yachi gulps, looking outside, but Ushijima is nowhere to be found.

“Kageyama, he’s gone,” she calls, her head sticking carefully through the window as she searches down the hall, half expecting him to pop out of nowhere and grab her.

Seconds pass and not even a hint of the demon approaches her. She breathes, relieved, but it doesn’t last long, the increasing muttering behind her awaking a new fear and making her heart beat with more force than before. She returns to Hinata’s side, trying hard not to panic like Kageyama is, hands fluttering over his injuries and wiping away blood before it can reach his eyes.

She wants to panic though, to cry and curse the way Kageyama does, but seeing him hunched over Hinata, so much concern and fear in his eyes, keeps her grounded. He loves Hinata just as much as she does, and for some reason that calms the racing fear in her veins and solidifies her want to fight back.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” she coos, laying a hand over Kageyama’s trembling ones and gently pushing him away. “We just need to stop the bleeding.”

“It’s everywhere, Hitoka, he’s cut up all over and he hit his head hard on the way down.”

She gently looks over Hinata’ injuries, stomach twisting no matter how hard she tries to push it down.

“The cuts on his arms and back aren’t too bad. It’s the gash on his forehead we need to be worried about,” she gulps, watching the deep red mix with the orange of his hair. She unbuttons her uniform shirt and hands it to Kageyama, leaving just her black tank top underneath, not caring about modesty in a situation like this. “Here, tear a strip of this off to tie on his head.”

He nods, a terrible ripping sound filling the room as he does what she says, handing the strips of fabric back as she wipes at the wound with her jacket.

“Lift his head,” she mutters, wrinkling her eyebrows in concentration and carefully wrapping the makeshift bandages around Hinata’s head, tying it on the side. Blood immediately seeps into the white cloth. It could almost be strawberry sauce on whipped cream, but it’s not.

“It’s not stopping. _Fuck_ , it’s not stopping,” Kageyama mumbles, pulling his knees to his chest.

“H-hitoka?” Terushima sits up somewhere to their side, rubbing his eyes with the palm of his hand and trying to make out the scene before him.

“Oh, Yuuji, thank god,” Yachi sighs, holding a bloodied hand to her chest. “Are you okay?”

“What’s going on?” He asks, brain still fuzzy. “Who’s that?” He lifts a hand to point at Kageyama who doesn’t acknowledge him at all, eyes not leaving Hinata’s bandage and shallow breathing.

“Just…stay here,” she tells him. “I’ll explain everything later.”

Terushima protests, questions spilling from his mouth like a broken dam but the others don’t listen, letting his voice become background noise to their terrified scrambling.

“Hitoka,” Kageyama whispers, a hand reaching out to grab her wrist and effectively pulling her attention back to him. “He’s not getting better.”

“The bandage should-,”

“The bandage won’t do shit,” he hisses, words stinging like a slap to her skin even though she’s sure he doesn’t mean them to. “It’s my fault. He can’t heal because of me.”

“What? Kageyama, slow down,” she says firmly, grabbing his face in her hands and turning those wide and terrified navy blue eyes to meet hers. “Explain.”

“The bond. _Our_ bond. It draws energy from him, especially when he’s unconscious, and with him weakened like this it’s hurting him,” he chokes, tears welling on his long dark lashes. “The bleeding won’t stop while we’re connected.”

“What…what are you saying?” She asks, no louder than a breath as her grip on his face slackens.

“It means that if we want to save him we have to break the bond. Break the circle.”

Tears prick the corners of Yachi’s eyes but he doesn’t reach up to wipe them away. “What will happen to you?”

“I’ll be free, sort of,” he says, guilt darkening his irises. “I can stay in this world only on the energy I’ve gotten from the bond but…I can also use that energy to heal him.”

“So you’re going to disappear?” Tears spill down her face at the thought.

Kageyama doesn’t answer, moving his gaze to stare Hinata’s face. Yachi feels his sadness, and even though she wants to argue back she nods, knowing that both of them would do anything to save Hinata, no matter what would happen to them as a result. Maybe that’s why they make such a good team.

“Okay,” she sniffs, looking back down at Hinata’s bandage that is now more rusty red than white. “But we can’t move him and we can’t leave him alone. How do we get to the circle?”

“I’ll go.”

Yachi hadn’t noticed when Terushima’s incessant questions had stopped. She almost forgot he was there altogether.

“Yuuji?” She asks, both her and Kageyama turning to look at him surprised.

“I…I don’t really know what’s going on,” he says, furrowing his eyebrows and wincing. “And I’m not sure if I really want to know but if breaking this circle thing will save Hinata then I’ll do it. Where is it?”

Kageyama stares at him, stunned; as if he has no idea how this boy could be the same one he’d seen as an insensitive enemy for the last few weeks. Yachi, however, lurches forward, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and almost knocking them both to the ground. He hesitates for a moment, hands shaking, but reaches around to pat her back gently. She remembers what Ushijima said about her, and she’s known it to be true for a long time, but she refuses to let the awkwardness waiting to spring up between them ruin a good friendship.

“Um, Hitoka?” Terushima says near her ear, pulling her out of her thoughts. “We’re kind of on a time limit here.”

“Oh! Right,” she squeaks, letting go and jumping back, causing him to almost fall backwards. “It’s in Hinata’s bedroom. Under the rug in the middle of the floor.”

“Okay,” he nods, standing up. “Do I just…go in?”

“His mom shouldn’t be home right now. There’s a key on top of the porch light,” she explains, ignoring the quick flash of sadness in his eyes at just how close Yachi is with Hinata and his family. She hopes she’ll have a chance to sit and talk with him after everything is over, to explain that she loves him but not the way he wants her to, considering they all live to the end of the day. “Go as fast as you can, Yuuji, please, but be careful.”

“Key on the light, circle on the floor. Got it,” he winks, sadness replaced by determination. “Good luck, Hitoka. And… other guy.”

“Good luck,” she whispers back as he carefully climbs through the broken window and sprints down the hall. She turns back to Kageyama and Hinata, sending a silent prayer for the plan to work and for Terushima to make it out without getting hurt.

“How is he?”

“He’s getting cold,” Kageyama whispers, holding Hinata’s hand in his and frowning. “I don’t know where Ushijima went but I doubt it’s good. And I doubt he’ll be gone long.”

Both of their heads snap up as the sound of screams comes from down the hallway in the cafeteria’s direction.

“I think I know where he is,” Yachi says, voice catching in her throat.

“He must be trying to get a new host as quickly as he can,” Kageyama tells her, face sharpening in concentration. “He can’t do much damage without one, but if he manages to get a soul we’re done for.”

“Can’t do much damage? Look at Shouyou!” She yells, voice peppered with fear instead of anger.

“That’s not even a fraction of what he can do,” Kageyama explains, voice feeble but dripping with malice. “He can destroy everyone here without as much as a thought. And he will.”

“We have to stop him.” Yachi almost doesn’t recognize her own voice, but the thought of everyone being in danger, not just the three of them, puts everything into perspective and gives her a sense of strength she’s never known before. “I know how to get rid of him.”

“You can’t-“

“I know, okay? I’ve…read some things. Don’t be mad,” she says, not wanting to look in his eyes and see the betrayal there.

“No, no, that’s good. Then I don’t have to explain it.” He sounds less angry now, less worried. He just sounds tired, and when Yachi looks up she finds his eyes trained on Hinata’s face again. She takes his other hand in hers; feeling connected to both of them at once and hoping it’ll help Hinata somehow.

“Ushijima must have done something terrible to his master to be able to roam free like this and have so much power reserve,” Kageyama explains. “And they must have been too weak willed to control him. But since he hasn’t gone very far and is focusing on the school I’m guessing it was either a student or a teacher and the circle is somewhere in the building.”

“Well we know it wasn’t Yuuji,” Yachi mumbles, thinking out loud, wracking her brain for anything that could be a hint. Weeks and weeks of memories rushing through her mind at once.

“Some people carry the circles with them so it could be hard to find-,”

“Mr. Takeda!”

Kageyama jumps as Yachi screams, almost falling over. “What?”

“Mr. Takeda. The teacher that was in the accident,” she explains, lowering her voice and leaning forward, burning into Kageyama’s blue eyes with her own fiery brown ones. “They never found out what happened to him but I remember him talking about needing some help to make his life go the way he wanted a week or so before it happened. Maybe he looked for help in the wrong places and Ushijima took advantage of him.” Her voice catches at the end, sympathy and fondness for the late teacher rushing to her all at once and mixing with the panicked grief already sitting in her chest.

“Do you know where he might’ve kept a summoning circle?”

“I know where I can check.”

Hinata stirs and they both turn to him, his face twisting in pain as he turns his head slightly, skin blanching before he goes still again.

“Hurry, Hitoka,” Kageyama says, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder slightly, leaving a burning imprint there, like when ice feels like fire on your fingertips.

She nods, leaning forward to gently brush a kiss to Hinata’s forehead before standing and awkwardly climbing through the window, adrenaline still pumping through her veins and into her muscles, propelling her steadily forward.

She felt as if years had passed but it had been mere minutes since the three of them had first entered this hallway.

“Alright, Hitoka, think, you can do this. Where would I keep a summoning circle if I was Mr. Takeda?” His office was her first guess, her feet guiding her down the paths students usually weren’t familiar with but she had spent too much time in, turning quickly when she spots the classroom with the recently removed name plate.

Slamming the door open Yachi stares at the room. It’s empty except for a few boxes in a corner, which makes her heart fall, sadness at the thought of Mr. Takeda’s presence disappearing from the school’s memory filling her but she pushes it away. She can be sad later; right now she had to be strong. She rips open the first box, rifling through stacks of books and little knick knacks. She checks each one quickly, searching for familiar symbol or anything out of the ordinary but finds nothing.

Near the bottom she finds a purple sticky note crumpled against the cardboard, the adhesive darkened with dust and no longer sticky. On the paper is an email and password in Mr. Takeda’s familiar neat script, probably his log in to the school website. She doesn’t know if it’ll be helpful, or why the teacher had written his information out in the open anyway, but Yachi figures hanging onto it can’t hurt and shoves it into her pocket before moving on to the next box.

 The other boxes yield similar results, just empty objects that no longer belong to anyone and exist in some between phase where they’re there but don’t really have a purpose and therefore don’t really matter. She wonders briefly if maybe he had the symbol on his person at the time and now it’s lying in the dumpster of some morgue downtown. The thought makes her feel sick.

As she finishes going through the third box she starts to panic, not knowing what they’ll do if she can’t find the circle and they can’t get rid of Ushijima. She’s terrified of the thought of everyone she’s ever known dying because of this demon business that has nothing to do with them but they are wrapped up in anyway. She leans against the wall and sighs, a broken sobbing sound coming from her throat as she slides down and hits the floor, thoughts freezing up and moving like gelatin through her brain.

“Don’t be so useless, stupid brain,” she growls, pulling at her ponytail and squeezing her eyes shut. “Where could it be?”

She doesn’t realize how close the stack of boxes is and she bumps them with her elbow, knocking the top one from its upright position until the contents spill on the floor with a soft shattering sound.

“Oh, n-,” she starts, leaning forward to see the mess and stopping as her eyes meet a broken pot with a wilted flower, recognizing it as one of the ones Mr. Takeda had planted in the rooftop garden. “That’s it!”

Yachi hops up, a new sense of hope burning in her chest as she makes her way back into the hallway, sprinting down the hall the way she came and towards the stairwell that will lead her to the roof.

“Please be there please be there please be there,” she mutters to herself over and over. Half to pump herself up and half to drone out the yelling behind her from the students in the cafeteria.

Ushijima must have somehow locked them in since no one seems to have left. The thought of all of those innocent students and teachers locked up with the evil creatures makes her blood boil, a reaction she isn’t used to, and she takes the stairs three at a time, determined to finish this as quickly as she can.

The air is hot when she pushes the heavy roof door open, a blanket of raw heat slamming into her like the sun reached down to slap her in the face. Blinking she steps out onto the roof, covering her eyes with one hand so she can see through the blazing sunshine. Mr. Takeda’s flowers are still in their planters, rows and rows of pansies, purple and pink, blue and yellow. She always liked the bright orange ones since they reminded her of Hinata’s fiery hair but she knew Mr. Takeda was fond of the pale pink blooms.

The memory makes her smile but she shakes her head, trying to focus again on the task at hand; she has to find the summoning circle. She checks the planters on all sides, not expecting to find it out in the open but still disappointed when it doesn’t show. Checking between the flowers yields no results either, and none of the stones among the soil have anything on them. Her heart starts to fall again, tears welling up as she realizes she failed, when a patch of empty soil catches her eye. Mr. Takeda made sure to cover every inch of the planters with flowers, and Yachi remembered him telling her he bought too many plants and ended up taking some home because he couldn’t fit them all. Holding her breath she digs both hands into the soft soil, the cool wet dirt feeling amazing against her skin.

She doesn’t have to go very deep before her fingers find something thick and long. She wraps her fingers around it and pulls, producing a heavy string attached to a round piece of wood.

“Yes!” she exclaims, turning it to see a shaky summoning circle drawn on the front with permanent marker, a thick gash dug into the wood on one side and breaking the lines.

After such a variety of emotions running through her in such a short time the excitement she feels is almost dull and her legs buckle beneath her as the adrenaline rush runs out and fatigue takes its place in her muscles. She only stays on the concrete for a few seconds, hopping back up despite how much her body protests and heading back to the stairwell.

Dropping the amulet around her neck, Yachi brushes the loose soil from her tank top but only smears more on from her dirty hands. She tucks the amulet under the neckline of her tank top, feeling slightly safer with the thing hidden.

The sound of screams is gone when she reenters the building which adds a sinister air to everything, as if time has already run out and they are just riding the wave before the ultimate evil crashes down on them all. Instead of running Yachi creeps as fast as she can through the halls, afraid to make any sound in the heavy silence.

She feels brave, a word that never had been attributed to her before, and even with fear still coursing through her she feels as if Ushijima appeared in front of her right this moment she would not give up the amulet easily. He would have to do so much more than pry it from her fingers, and that knowledge propels her forward, filling her with a sense of determination so much stronger than every other feeling. She has friends to save, and she will not stop until she succeeds.


	9. Chapter 9

Hinata’s chest rises and falls too quickly, breaths too shallow, making Kageyama’s heart break with every inhale. It’s so stupid, and he knows it, the way he can’t stop himself from caring about humans even though he always ends up losing them. Even though all of the stories have the same ending.

This one was different though, lasting for what felt like the blink of an eye but burning bright and hot like a dying star. And now there won’t be a next time, even if he had wanted one, since everything is on the verge of ending. If Ushijima’s plan succeeds there won’t be any humans to bring him here again, no human world to come back to. Ever.

No birds whistling in the early hours before anyone wakes and the sky is that pale lavender gray he loves so much. No more grass itching at the back of his legs or wind blowing clean and fresh. No more Hinata laughing in the sun that lights his hair aflame or Yachi’s small smiles she thinks she hides so well but he always catches a glimpse of. This bright world with its beautiful people will be replaced by the dark greed and disjointedness he came from.

He knows it won’t be pretty, and he almost hopes Hinata and Yachi won’t have to watch what the demons will do with free reign.

Regardless of how horrible it sounds, he’s aware that Ushijima’s plan is not without reason, seeing how humans have used demons as slaves for hundreds of years, leaving behind a history of distrust and hurt that only grew from generation to generation. But despite all of that, despite being used and disposed and pulled from place to place Kageyama believes that human’s are good at their core, even if some of those cores become shrouded and twisted. He believes that no world that could produce souls like Hinata’s and Yachi’s could ever deserve to be destroyed.

However Kageyama remembers the time he felt the same as Ushijima, when he would’ve torn this world apart with his bare hands and laugh at the desolation in his wake, tearing and shredding and destroying. He had hated humans once too, but that was before he learned to love them.

The last human who had summoned him shined with a pure heart too, except he was less sunshine and warmth and more plain radiance. Oikawa Tooru was the son of an emperor, so many years ago Kageyama had stopped counting, who had summoned him to act as a body guard while his father’s armies were at war. A boy with bouncing brown curls, a smile that could rival Hinata’s, and a steel resolve to go along with it. Kageyama had absolutely loathed the prince, wishing he could take part in the assassination attempts instead of stopping them.

That was where he had met Ushijima, back in a time when his eyes weren’t so cynical and his heart not too hardened and empty. Tooru’s father had forced his toughest general, a man named Iwaizumi who had grown up with Tooru, to summon him to help fight on the front lines, and together they decimated thousands of soldiers, losing themselves slowly along the way.

Kageyama watched a hate for humanity slowly grow within Ushijima, which did nothing to help Iwaizumi hang onto his as the blood on his hands began to weigh him down. He watched as Tooru grew more and more frantic, terrified of what his father was turning Iwaizumi into and letting the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it tear him apart.

That was what Kageyama fell in love with. The way the seemingly pompous and self centered prince practically bursted with compassion for his friend. Kageyama fell in love with how much Tooru loved Iwaizumi. He fell in love with how much selflessness could be contained in such a selfish species, and their capacity for so many different emotions, so many different colors to stain their souls and bleed onto those they touched.

But none of that lasted very long.

The first time Iwaizumi came back with a loss, dragging himself along with bloodied armor that was only partly his, the Emperor broke the circle binding him to Ushijima, claiming that he had no need for a slave that didn’t produce results. Since his master was weakened Ushijima faded quickly, and Iwaizumi was devastated. The Emperor ordered him back onto the front lines the next day, having forced a different general to summon another demon, but since he was still too injured to fight Tooru took his place in secret.

Kageyama tried to convince him not to, he had tried to stop the anger and worry fueled rampage Tooru was on, terrified of what would happen if his father found out but even more so of what would happen to Iwaizumi if he went to fight.

Tooru was determined to save the friend he loved so dearly, and Kageyama thought he had never looked as beautiful as he did in the moment before a spear pierced his chest, with oblivious hope in his eyes and a strong set to his shoulders. It had come so quickly as if from nowhere, and he had no time to stop it, failing the only task he had been assigned; protect the prince.

The pain of dying like a human was nothing compared to the pain of losing love itself in such a way that revealed the true dirty underbelly of the world. Tooru’s compassion had been awarded with nothing but hurt, and Kageyama lost faith that his love for humans was justified until he was met again with a smile too bright for his darkened eyes and two beating hearts to warm the cold lifeless one in his own chest.

Except now he was going to lose them too, and he’d be back to where he started, alone and empty; all the love he felt more intensely than years ago, however impossible he thought it was, would disappear.

Kageyama wished Ushijima could see the human world the way he does, for the hidden beauty among the darkness he’s used to seeing. It’s wishful thinking though, and Kageyama is sure he’d do the same if he had never known human kindness.

Hinata stirs slightly, eyes darting quickly behind thin lids outlined with that same pale lavender gray color Kageyama loves, although it doesn’t look as calming on Hinata’s skin as in the sky. Kageyama wonders what he sees, what he’s dreaming about, hoping it’s something happy and using the thought to distract him from the energy he can feel funneling from Hinata’s body into his own. It’s a normal feeling, one he’s felt every single night, bonding them together more and more, but now he loathes the connection and the way it weakens Hinata by the second.  

“Hurry up, Hitoka,” he whispers, laying a hand over Hinata’s forehead that usually feels so warm against his palm but now matches his own low temperature. “And please be okay. Both of you.”

Kageyama feels so useless, so angry that there’s nothing he can do to protect anyone except sit here and feel his tie to the world weaken as Hinata loses more and more blood.

He stands up suddenly, unable to watch Hinata’s color get worse and worse anymore, grabbing a book from a table and throwing it as hard as he can towards the wall and screaming, trying to alleviate his frustration.

“AGHH _GODDAMNIT_!”

A familiar squeak comes from the window as the book hits the frame and a familiar blonde head ducks out of the way.

“Watch out!” Said person screams.

“Yachi! Oh god,” he says, both of them staring wide eyed at each other, stunned.

“Don’t do that,” she tells him, holding her chest with one hand and breathing heavily before clambering into the room. She removes something from around her neck and holds it up. “I found it.”

He nods, pride swelling in his chest as he takes the amulet from Yachi and inspects it.

“You’re amazing, this is definitely it. Are you okay? Did you run into anyone one the way?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she tells him, waving away his concern. “But Ushijima has everyone locked in the cafeteria so he’ll probably be back with a host soon. We need to hurry before anyone gets hurt. How’s Shouyou?”

“Getting worse,” Kageyama admits, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “We’re helpless until Terushima breaks the circle.”

“I haven’t heard from him,” she sighs just as her phone starts ringing in her pocket, some synthetic pop sound coming from it. “Oh! That’s him!”

With slightly trembling hands, Yachi takes out the device and answers the call.

“Yuuji! Did you find it?” she asks as she shoves the phone against her ear, Terushima’s voice coming fast and muffled from the other end. “It’s not paint, it’s lipstick.”

Kageyama presses his ear to the backside of the phone, sandwiching it between him and Yachi but only hearing something about ‘not coming off’ and ‘it stinks in here’.

“There should be some alcohol in the bathroom,” Yachi tells him. “Just scrub really hard, you only need to remove a small piece.”

Kageyama kneels back by Hinata’s side; grabbing his hand again as Yachi continues to give Terushima instructions. It feels like hours, precious time slipping away, but finally he hears a firm ‘Got it!” from the phone and a sudden pain in his chest.

“Yes! Thank you so much, Yuuji, but I have to go,” Yachi says, hanging up and rushing to Kageyama’s side.

He doesn’t see her coming closer though, gripping his chest from the pain; he bends forward closing his eyes. He still can hear a loud groan escaping from Hinata at his side and Yachi’s worried voice near him.

“Oh no. Oh, god. Are you o-” She can’t finish talking, a squeak suddenly coming out of her. Through blurry eyes Kageyama watches her dropping to her knees before making it to them.

He can’t move towards her, instead he just tightens his fist in the fabric of his shirt, holding his breath as what feels like a hundred rubber bands snap inside of his chest. Every pop resounds in his ears and he can hear the same sound coming from Hinata and Yachi, which only means their bonds are breaking.

He’s pale and sweating by the time it’s over, and when he opens his eyes he realizes he ended up on all fours on the ground, but he’s sure Hinata would be too if he wasn’t already so weak.

“Kageyama?” Yachi asks tentatively, voice shaking as she lays a warm hand on his shoulder. Her eyes are filled with tears when he turns to her. “Is it over?”

“Yeah,” he pants, sitting back up and trying his best to smile but only producing a weak and pained grimace. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yes,” she whispers, looking almost ashamed as she puts a hand over her own heart. “You can save him now, right?”

Kageyama takes the hand resting on her lap and squeezes it, letting the gesture answer her question and say everything else he can’t bring himself to vocalize. They both know he’ll disappear once it’s over, once all the energy he had taken from Hinata is returned to him, and so they let the silent nod and sad smile be their goodbyes.

He lets go quickly, both of them moving back to hover over Hinata; Kageyama sitting to his side, hands spread over his chest and Yachi behind him, Hinata’s head cradled in her lap.

“Hold him still,” he tells her, and she places one hand gently on either side of his face.

Channeling the energy is easy, letting the warmth flow through him and to his palms where it moves like osmosis back to Hinata where it came from, his color immediately starting to return. The hard part is keeping his balance and focusing as the cuts closing on Hinata’s skin start to open on his own, his head starting to throb from the blunt force of hitting the window and desks.

“It’s working,” Yachi exclaims, moving her hands down to hold Hinata’s shoulders as his eyelids flutter and he starts to move around. “Kageyama! It’s…Kageyama?” Her excitement disappears as she looks up to see the blood running down his face from the gash opening on his forehead.

“I’m fine, just hold him!” He barks, trying his best to stay focused as his grip on the world starts to weaken, feeling himself being slowly pulled back to the demon world. “I heal quickly don’t worry.”

“You’re…you’re fading,” she whispers, looking down at his palms that are starting to lose opacity around the edges, Hinata’s uniform shirt visible through the hazy color.

“That doesn’t matter,” he replies, watching the last of Hinata’s wounds fade from fresh pink scars to smooth unbroken skin.

“That’s enough!” Yachi yells, grabbing his hand and forcing him to look her in the eyes. “You did it, he’s waking up. Don’t push yourself.”

The concern in her voice makes him smile, a genuine smile, as he remembers the way she had looked at him in the past, how afraid she was for so long and how much she distrusted him. But now he has to leave, just as they finally built something wholesome and warm, something he’d call love, the same as they both feel for Hinata. It’s almost tragically comical.

“You do heal fast,” she says softly, reaching up to gently wipe away the drying blood from the already closing wound above his eye. He opens his mouth to reply, not sure what will spill out, but Hinata sits up suddenly, pulling both of their attention his way.

“Useless? Yeah, well, use _this_ ,” he slurs, trying to throw a punch but knocking himself off balance again and falling into Kageyama’s chest.

“Shouyou!” Yachi cries, tears spilling down her face despite the relieved smile stretching across her face. “Thank goodness.”

“Wh-where are we?” He mumbles against Kageyama, but before he has a chance to answer Yachi plows into both of them, wrapping her short arms around Kageyama’s middle and sandwiching Hinata between them, the sounds coming from her an odd mix of laughter and choking sobs.

“I thought we were going to lose you,” she mumbles into Hinata’s hair as Kageyama melts into both of them, sitting his chin on top of Yachi’s head and focusing on anchoring himself there, not ready to slip away. “Thank you, Kageyama.”

“What d’you mean? M’fine,” Hinata insists, earning a chuckle from the both of them as his eyes droop closed again.

He needs to tell them, Kageyama thinks to himself. He has to let them know how he feels before anything else happens, just in case he never sees them again. Just in case they don’t win. And, beyond that, and more selfishly, just because he needs them to know.

“Shouyou, Hitoka, I-,”

A sudden jolt in his chest stops him; it feels like something alive moving around inside of him.

“Huh?” Yachi moves to look up at him, eyebrows knitting together when she sees the look of confused fear on his face.

“I don-,”

He feels the jolt again, stronger this time, and he jumps back, Yachi struggling to keep Hinata from falling and pulling him back into her lap.

“What’s wrong?”

The movements come faster and faster, a small thumping that grows by the second, becoming a steady drumming against his ribs. “Something is in me,” he whispers, not sure how else to describe it.

“What do you mean?”

“Feel,” he says, grabbing her palm and pressing it against his chest. “It’s moving.”

She holds it there for a moment; eyes growing more confused as Kageyama watches her expectedly, waiting for her to feel it. “All I feel is your heartbeat.”

“Heartbeat?” They look at each other silently, both minds working a mile a minute before the realization hits them at the same time. “Oh my god a heartbeat!”

“It feels so weird,” he whispers, laying his hand over Yachi’s splayed fingers. “You feel this all the time?”

She nods, grinning so wide it spreads to Kageyama’s face.

“You’re solidifying,” she tells him, looking down at their hands and watching as the edges of his fingers slowly become real again. “What does this mean?”

“I-I think I’m becoming a human, but I don’t understand why.”

“Because you saved Shouyou,” she says, so firmly that he doesn’t dare disagree, eyes burning bright and beautiful. “Only a human can perform such an act of love.”

“Hitoka, I,” he repeats, taking Yachi’s face in his hands before he can lose confidence, hesitating as he tries to figure out how to word what he wants to say, but she closes the gap between them, pressing her lips quickly to his and pulling back.

“I know. Me too. But we have work to do”

He nods, his heart beating like a butterfly in his chest, a new sensation he isn’t used to but he hopes he can feel again. “Right. The amulet.”

Both of their heads whip around to the doorway as an awful scraping sound fills the room, the desks blocking the door suddenly thrown aside as it swings open. A student stands among the mess with blank stare on their face.

“Well isn’t this cute?” A voice echoes in the room.

“Wha-,”

“You managed to stall me, but that’s it,” the student says, face shimmering as they speak like the sun catching stray droplets of water in the air and another face showing through. Ushijima’s face. “I’ve come to finish what I started.”

Kageyama leaps up, putting himself between Ushijima’s host and his two friends. They may be alive but now that their bond is broken their souls are no longer safe and the thought of either of them being Ushijima’s vessel makes his blood boil.

“Leave these kids alone, Ushijima. They aren’t part of your revenge. They don’t deserve this.”

“But they do. They deserved it the moment they were born into this filthy world,” he stops, raising an eyebrow and eyeing Kageyama’s still transparent form and letting out a long guttural laugh. “You love them, don’t you? You actually care for these humans?”

He’s right, and Kageyama hates him for it. He hates the way Ushijima can see right through him as if he were an open book. He hates the way his feelings put Hinata and Yachi in danger.

 “Fuck you,” he spits, making Ushijima smirk.

“I can’t wait for these two get torn apart when I open the realms,” he says, gesturing behind Kageyama to where Hinata and Yachi still sit, stunned. “And I can’t wait to make you watch.”


	10. Chapter 10

Hinata’s eyelids feel heavy as he struggles to raise them, everything around him swirling into a confusing mess of familiar voices and memories that make no sense.

He remembers Terushima, he thinks, and he remembers the demon Kageyama had called Ushijima. He hears his friends talking, something about a heartbeat, accompanied by an odd emptiness below his ribs. At some point he’s sure a huge pain had erupted there, but among the pain in other parts of his body there wasn’t a hint of what could cause it.

And now there is something soft below his head and a warm feeling in his chest, but the air around him suddenly feels jarringly cold and tense.

“You piece of shit,” Kageyama growls, the first sound to firmly reach Hinata’s ears.

His eyes snap open just as the pillow disappears and his head thuds on the ground.

“Kageyama, no!” Yachi yells, her panic making Hinata sit up suddenly even as his sore body protests. His bleary eyes focus as Yachi wraps her arms around Kageyama’s middle and presses her face to his back. “You’ll just make it worse!”

Feeling something tight around his head Hinata reaches up, pulling away a thick piece of bloodied cloth. His brain struggles to make a connection as he rubs his fingertips across his forehead and finds no sign of injury. He shakes his head to clear it, tossing the bandage away from him and looking up.

It takes Hinata a moment to notice the extra person in the room, a first year he’s sure he’s seen in the halls before but can’t place a name to. There’s something off with the boy, like his face isn’t really his face but a crude amalgamation of it, one with harsher lines and heavy edges.

“Listen to the girl, Kageyama. She’s much smarter than you,” he says, and Hinata’s blood runs cold as he recognizes the voice as Ushijima’s. Suddenly the odd lines of the boys face make sense.

“She is. I know that. And nothing that’s happened to you is her fault or anyone else here’s,” Kageyama says, pleading for the demon to listen. “The people who hurt you are long gone, Ushijima. Your plan isn’t going to fix anything.”

“As long as humans are still commanding us whenever it suits them the problem still exists, Kageyama. Every second they are allowed to live is another second spent as a _subject_ ,” Ushijima growls, face twisting in anger.

“You’re wrong,” Kageyama shakes his head, a certain sadness to his tone that pulls at Hinata. “Maybe as a whole they aren’t so great. They’re a selfish species with no knowledge of anything bigger than themselves, but when you look at them individually you’ll find beauty. You’ll find compassion and strength and _love_. _God_ , do they love. So deep it’s infectious. You can’t punish them all for the actions of a few. Not when they have so much to give.”

Ushijima starts to laugh, a raking metallic sound like nails on a chalkboard. “You are so _blind_ , Kageyama, I almost feel bad for you. Almost.”

Kageyama opens his mouth to speak again, Yachi’s arms tightening around him, but he’s cut off by Ushijima’s booming voice.

“That all may be true for you. You may love them and you may see them for the goodness they possess, but don’t let them fool you. We are nothing to them. We are lower than dirt and they will _never_ see us as anything more than monsters.”

“Then change their minds! Prove them wrong!”

“ _DON’T YOU THINK I’VE TRIED_?” His voice bounces off the walls, so loud Kageyama staggers backwards. “A monster will always be a monster to them, Kageyama, why can’t you see that?”

If Hinata didn’t know better he’d almost feel bad for Ushijima, seeing someone wronged so many times they feel they have no options left.

“Listen-,”

That laughter returns suddenly, cutting off Kageyama’s words and making Yachi look up in confused surprise.

“Of course. Now I see why. How could I have missed it?”

“Wh-,”

“You’ve joined them,” Ushijima says, lip curling with feline ferocity. “You’re a human now, aren’t you?”

Human? Kageyama? Hinata has no idea what he means, or how on earth Kageyama could have become human. And yet he believes it for some reason, and suddenly the emptiness in his chest makes sense. Their bond is gone, they are separated, and Kageyama is in serious danger.

“An act of compassion,” Kageyama whispers, barely loud enough to be heard. “That’s what happened. One deed done out of pure human love and my heart began to beat. What does that tell you?”

No one breathes as the two make eye contact, staring each other down across the classroom silent as the grave.

“It tells me that you’ve joined the enemy. It tells me that you are traitorous scum, below the scum that already occupies this world. It tells me that I would like nothing more than to tear you apart and watch the world burn afterwards.”

With a vague feeling of déjà vu Hinata finds himself standing and throwing himself at Ushijima, tackling the small form of his host to the ground before he has a chance to think.

“Shouyou!” Kageyama and Yachi yell at the same time behind him, but he ignores them.

“You keep your goddamn filthy monster hands _off_ of him,” he spits, arm pulling back in a fist to strike but freezing midair as hands close around it.

“Don’t,” Kageyama warns, eyes wide when Hinata turns to meet them. “You’ll hurt the host.”

Hinata wants to argue, but in a second there’s a hand closing around their throats, and both of them are flipped over with ease. Using the distraction to wriggle his arms free, the demon had found the perfect moment to attack, completely blindsiding them.

“You’re so weak now, Kageyama,” Ushijima smiles. “This is almost too easy. How boring.”

“Let him go,” Kageyama chokes, struggling for breath.

“How ironic would it be,” he continues, leaning his face down so close that Kageyama is forced to turn to the side. “If I took your brand new soul and used it to carry out my plans?”

“Leave him alone,” Hinata rasps, his Adam’s apple pressing painfully into his windpipe as he struggles.

“And you,” Ushijima says, not missing a beat as he turns to smile down at Hinata predatorily. “Such ferocity. It’s refreshing. And now that you’re bond is broken you’d make a perfect host.”

Ushijima’s face begins to waver again, almost undulating as it becomes less tangible, returning to its previous shape as the demon starts to exit the host. Hinata opens his mouth to scream just as a voice catches all three of their attention.

“Hey! Over here!”

Yachi stands in the center of the room, a necklace hanging from one hand and a lighter in the other. Her phone lays on the table in front of her, white light glaring up from the screen.

“This might hurt a little,” she quips, moving her hand to let the flame kiss the bottom of the amulet as she begins to read, her words unsteady and definitely not comprehendible.

The hand around Hinata’s throat immediately loosens, and while he and Kageyama try to sit up Ushijima growls, turning towards Yachi. She continues to chant and Ushijima lets out a guttural scream, as if the lighter she’s holding is being pressed to his tongue. Before he can move too far Hinata grabs onto one of his ankles, Kageyama taking the other as they try to keep him from getting closer to Yachi.

Looking up Hinata sees her standing firm, both feet planted on the ground and jaw set as she reads the words. The flame from the lighter reflects a warm orange across her face, brown eyes shining, and he thinks that he’s never seen her look braver or more beautiful in his life.

“Hey, dumbass! Pay attention!” Kageyama yells as Ushijima pulls his ankle free of Hinata’s grip for half a second.

“Shit! Sorry, yeah, I’ve got him,” Hinata replies, grabbing it again and holding tighter. He shakes his head, hoping to knock the thought of Yachi loose. Now was not the time.

They manage to hold him still but only briefly as the paint seal on the wood amulet starts to melt and his screams become deeper and more pained. Hinata has no idea what’s happening, no idea what the amulet is or what Yachi is trying to do, but he knows he can’t let Ushijima get to her or they won’t stand a chance.

“Hold tight,” he says through gritted teeth to Kageyama who looks back at him like he’d punch him if he had a free hand.

“What do you think I’m doing?” He spits.

Both pairs of eyes go wide as Ushijima starts to drag them along the ground behind him, useless to stop it with nothing to grab onto as an anchor.

Kageyama’s eyes narrow as an idea pops in his head. “On the count of three pull as hard as you can.”

Hinata nods, showing he understands, and Kageyama counts.

“One, two…three!”

Both boys lift slightly on their knees and tug with all of their strength, pulling Ushijima’s legs behind him and wincing as he slams forward against the ground. Kageyama jumps on him first, pinning him down from behind as Hinata wraps his hands around his knees to keep him from pushing free.

“Shit, it’s not working!” Kageyama pants, voice desperate as Ushijima begins to pull himself along with his arms, dragging both boys behind him.

“What do we do?” Hinata asks through his teeth, trying his best to keep Ushijima still.

“I don’t know!”

“Hitoka, watch out!

Before Yachi has a chance to realize what’s happening a hand closes around her ankle and pulls it forward. She reaches out to the desk to catch herself but brings it down with her, phone sliding across the room as her back slams against the floor and the lighter flies from her hand on impact.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Hinata whispers as the lighter drops onto the books and papers spilling out from the fallen desks, immediately catching fire and spreading to the rest of the mess they’d made in the classroom. “Hitoka, watch out!”

He leaps from Ushijima’s legs and grabs Yachi’s hand, pulling her to the side before the flames can reach her.

They both turn as Ushijima stands up, pain fading from his face, but he falls to his knees again as Kageyama scoops up Yachi’s phone and continues to read from the screen. He reaches out to grab for Kageyama again but falls flat as he is slowly pulled from his host, appearing before them in his true form. There are burn marks on half of his face, red and angry with jagged charred edges beneath black eyes and smoldering horns.

“The amulet,” Hinata breathes, looking down suddenly at Yachi.

She nods, gripping the string tight before flinging it into the pile of burning books and turning to bury her face in Hinata’s chest.

He wants to comfort her, to hug her tight as Ushijima screams and turns to ash before his eyes, crumbling to the ground as Kageyama finishes the chant and the last of the amulet burns away, but he can’t. They still aren’t safe.

“Pull the fire alarm down the hall and get out,” he tells her, tearing himself away from her grip before she can protest.

Yachi stays still, looking with horrified eyes in his direction.

Hinata turns when he notices she hasn’t moved, eyes frantic as he pulls her up and shoves her out of the room.

“GO!”He yells, and the urgency in his voice hits her, starting to run after giving a last glance to the burning classroom.

Once she’s out, Hinata grabs the first year and drags him away from the edge of the fire.

“Kageyama, grab his legs,” he says, bending down to wrap his arms under the boy’s shoulders.

Kageyama nods and obliges, helping Hinata carry the boy through the door just as the flames lick up onto the paper lining the classroom walls, the entire room erupting in flames and smoke. In that instant the fire alarm blares to life, its annoying sounds echoing through all the building.

The smoke follows them as they struggle down the hallway; the acrid smell and heat entering their lungs and making them cough and wheeze. Based on the silence in the building Hinata figures most of the students are already outside. He had no idea how any of this was supposed to be explained, but for now he tries to focus on getting safely out of the building.

When he and Kageyama reach the stairwell the smoke dies down, and they’re able to breathe better as they do their best to stagger to the first floor.

“Hinata! What are you still doing in there?” A booming voice calls to them from the front entrance and Hinata lifts his head to find Mr. Sawamura walking towards them. “Why is there blood on your face? And what happened to Yaku?”

Mr. Sawamura stops suddenly, realizing he doesn’t recognize Kageyama’s face from the student body but he just shakes his head and turns back to Hinata.

“He tripped and hit his head, sir,” Hinata lies, avoiding the blood question and spouting out the first answer that pops in his head. “We were trying to carry him out before the fire got too bad.”

“That’s very brave of you boys but I’ll take it from here,” Mr. Sawamura tells them, taking the boy from them easily and slinging him over his shoulder. At this, Hinata makes a mental note never to get on Mr. Sawamura’s bad side.

“Thank goodness,” he pants, leaning over with his hands on his knee and patting Kageyama on the back when he starts to cough again.

“We need you out of the building before the fire department makes it here. Also Yachi is outside practically trying to claw her way back in to look for you,” Mr. Sawamura says, amusement in his eyes now that he knows no one is in danger. “I was on my way in here to find you for her.”

“Thanks. I’ll go try to calm her down,” Hinata nods, grabbing Kageyama’s arm and following the teacher through the hall and out into the front courtyard of the school.

Outside is chaos; students watching wide eyed and mouth agape at the flames licking at the windows, teachers frantically trying to gather students by class and get a proper head count, everyone snapping pictures or panicking. Hinata and Kageyama barely have a moment to take it all in before something tackles them from the side, throwing them off balance.

“Shouyou! Kageyama! You’re okay!”

Yachi’s attack sends Hinata into Kageyama’s chest who struggles to keep them all standing as the girl sobs incoherently while hugging whatever she can reach.

“I didn’t know if you’d make it out and they wouldn’t let me back in and I was so worried, are you hurt are you-,”

“Hitoka,” Kageyama cuts her off, smiling despite himself. “Breathe.”

“Right, right, I’m sorry,” she says, stopping to stand straight and take a deep breath, stepping back. “So is he…really gone?”

Kageyama’s eyes shift down, a look of remorse glossing over the surface. “Yeah. He’s gone for good.”

Yachi reaches around Hinata to squeeze Kageyama’s shoulder, an attempt to comfort him, which causes him to wonder briefly when they got so close. A sense of jealousy pops up, warming his cheeks, but he’s not exactly sure who he’s jealous _of_.

“I wish it could have ended differently somehow,” Yachi whispers, slipping her free hand in Hinata’s and making his cheeks burn hotter.

“There wasn’t anything else we could do,” he tells her, letting his muscles relax as he realizes they hold hands all the time. Nothing is weird or different.

“You’re right. We were out of options and things would’ve ended much worse if we’d wasted time,” Kageyama agrees, smiling again but sadder this time. Halfhearted and pained. “Besides, he was going to hurt you both. I couldn’t let that happen. Not when-,”

He stops suddenly, flushing such a bright shade of scarlet Hinata is afraid he might combust, and looking over he realizes Yachi’s face is a similar hue. A cold sense of fear washes over him. Just how much action did he miss while he was unconscious?

Hinata thinks back through the hazy half conscious memories in his mind, trying to decipher some of the random muttering he heard while struggling to come to. Nothing really makes sense except for one odd sound he wasn’t sure how to place until now.

“Did you two, uhh,” he starts, rubbing the back of his neck and avoiding looking either of them in the eyes. “Did you kiss or something? On top of me? While I was unconscious?”

“What!” Yachi squeaks, hand flying to her mouth. “How did you…we didn’t think you were-,”

“Well when you put it that way it sounds awful,” Kageyama mumbles, looking to Yachi and shrugging before both of them burst into laughter.

Hinata’s stomach twists as the happy sound surrounds him. He knows it shouldn’t bother him so much; the two people he cares about most falling for each other. He should be happy for them. They deserve it, but he can’t help but feel like someone just punched him in the gut. 

He tries his best to slap a fake smile on his face and look up, wanting to congratulate them, but he’s cut off as two pairs of lips press against the sides of his face. There’s an embarrassing smacking sound as Yachi and Kageyama pull back, big grins stretching across both of their faces.

“You didn’t think we’d leave you out, did you?” Yachi asks, giggling and shaking her head.

“Yeah, don’t be a dumbass,” Kageyama agrees, smiling in a way that makes him look genuinely happy.

“Wha-,” Hinata stutters, completely dumbfounded. Are they serious? Is this real? Did he actually die and this is heaven?

“Hey!”

All three turn towards the sound as Terushima comes sprinting up the front path, looking tired and sweaty.

“Yuuji!” Yachi calls, relief washing over her face. “You made it!”

“Yeah,” he pants, doubling over when he reaches them. “Just in time too from the looks of it.”

“Thank you so much again,” Yachi says, throwing her arms around him. “I can never thank you enough.”

Hinata has no idea what’s going on but he knows he doesn’t like it.

“Nah, it was nothing,” Terushima replies, waving his hand and turning to Hinata. “You look well, Hinata. I’m glad you’re doing better.”

“Huh?” This definitely isn’t the Terushima he knows.

“You don’t know, you weren’t awake,” Kageyama says, putting a hand on Hinata’s shoulder. “Terushima went and broke the circle for us so I could heal you. He saved your life.”

“He did _WHAT_?”

“Don’t look so surprised,” Terushima chuckles, standing to clap Hinata on the back. Maybe a little rougher than necessary. “The rivalry was all in good fun, right?”

“Sure,” Hinata grumbles, not wanting to admit Terushima might be an enjoyable human being after all. Even if just a little.

Terushima opens his mouth to retort just as the window of a classroom on the third floor explodes; glass raining on the concrete as the whole crowd lets out a collective gasp. The small group is the only ones not to jump at the sound, having faced much worse than broken windows in the last hour.

“You four! Get over here and line up!”

Miss Kiyoko waves at them from across the courtyard, a clipboard under her arm and a stern look in her eyes. They jog up to her side without protest.

“What are you doing over there? You should be in line. And why are you covered in blood?” she asks them, confusion crossing her eyes the same as in Mr. Sawamura’s when she looks up at Kageyama. “You know what. I don’t even want to know. But you, young man, have you checked in with your homeroom teacher?”

“No?” he answers softly, avoiding looking directly into the teacher’s eyes.

“And what are you waiting for? What class are you in? Why aren’t you using the uniform?”

“He’s new!” Hinata cuts in, drawing Miss Kiyoko’s attention away from the panic on Kageyama’s face. “He came to see the school because he’s transferring here. What a wild day for a first impression, right?”

“Indeed,” she answers, pushing her glasses up suspiciously but otherwise accepting the answer. “Anyway, you boys wouldn’t know anything about the fire, would you?”

“Wasn’t there an intruder?” Yachi asks, stepping forward to try and free them all from blame. “Isn’t it possible he could have somehow-,”

Hinata and Terushima turn to each other, nodding as Yachi rambles, the same idea popping into their heads.

“Hitoka, it’s okay. It was us, ma’am,” Hinata says, bowing his head to make the confession more believable.

“It was one of our pranks. A big one. And it got out of hand. We’re really sorry,” Terushima continues, dropping his head in shame too.

“That’s probably the first thing I’ve heard that makes sense today,” Miss Kiyoko sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose beneath her glasses. “Just get in line. We’ll deal with that later.”

“Yes, ma’am,” all four say in unison, scampering away before they can get themselves in more trouble.

“Well, whatever happens I think we deserve it,” Terushima shrugs when they settle in at the back of the line.

“Yeah,” Hinata nods, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Lose a battle win the war, right?”

“Who won the war?”

“I did.”

“No way!” Terushima yells as Yachi and Kageyama snort behind them.

Maybe the setting is odd, their school burning behind them and their clothes dirty and torn, but everything feels right. Hinata made an unexpected friend, helped kill a monster while simultaneously saving the human race and found out the two people he loved most loved him back; so far that makes for an incredibly interesting day.

But overall, he thought, the best thing to come from the excitement and fear and chaos was that humanity had gained a wonderful new addition.


	11. Chapter 11

Yachi’s soft voice fills the sunny day as she reads aloud from ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, a breeze blowing softly through the trees in the park and making for a calming scene. She had chosen it hoping Kageyama would like it, his half understanding of human behavior and unconditional love for it at the same time reminding her of Scout’s innocent views of the world.

He seems interested enough, letting her voice narrate the childish antics of Scout and Jem in the beginning of the book as his head lies against her thigh and she runs a hand absentmindedly through the grass beneath him.

“I think I’m dying,” Kageyama says suddenly, interrupting Yachi. The sudden outburst makes her jump, almost dropping the book on his face.

“What?” Yachi squeaks, slapping a hand to her chest.

“My stomach feels weird,” he tells her, looking up with a scowl on his confused face. “Kind of like it’s burning? And it keeps making these bubbling feelings. I think I might have a virus, or a parasite, or-,”

He’s cut off as Yachi begins to laugh, clutching the closed book to her chest as the sound shakes through her body. Hurt crosses Kageyama’s eyes and she feels bad but she can’t stop. “You’re not dying, Kageyama,” she blurts, wiping a tear and trying to catch her breath. “You’re just hungry.”

“Hungry?”

“Yes. Food. It’s a thing human’s need to survive,” Yachi shakes her head, finally catching her breath. She leans over to reach into her bag, pulling out a sandwich in a plastic bag and handing it over. “Here. Eat this.”

Kageyama sits up and takes the bag from her, wrinkling his nose at the contents. “You want me to eat this? But human food is-,”

“Disgusting. I know. You’ve told me. But you’ve never eaten human food as a human before,” she smiles, trying to encourage him. “It’s good, trust me. You can’t go wrong with peanut butter and jelly.”

He pulls the bag open and takes the sandwich out, lifting the top bread to inspect the gooey contents inside. “What’s it made out of?” He asks, frowning.

“Peanuts and grapes,” Yachi sighs, watching him sniff experimentally at the bread. “Just taste it.”

Kageyama’s stomach lets out a surprisingly loud gurgle as he takes a bite of the sandwich, chewing carefully as he considers the flavors. His facial expressions change so quickly Yachi can’t follow them.

“Well?” She prods, waiting for him to say something. “What do you think?”

“This is incredible,” he mumbles around a mouthful of bread. Yachi starts to laugh again as Kageyama practically shoves the whole sandwich in his mouth, getting purple jelly smears on both cheeks.

“You’re such a rookie at this human thing,” she giggles, reaching into her bag to grab napkins, some carrot sticks, and an apple. “Here, take these too.”

“Are you making fun of me?” Kageyama asks, ignoring the napkins and biting into one of the carrot sticks. He makes a face at the flavor but continues to eat them.

“No, I think it’s cute,” she tells him, smiling at the pure curiosity and discovery in his eyes as he tries the different foods. “Did Shouyou not feed you anything last night?”

He shakes his head, finishing the bite of apple in his mouth before speaking. “No, once he snuck me into his room I fell asleep immediately. Which is another thing! When I was asleep I kept seeing these weird pictures?”

“You were dreaming,” Yachi explains, having much more fun that she should be. “That’s normal too.”

“That happens every night?”

“Usually. And it’s almost always different.”

“Humans are so weird,” he sighs, taking another bite of apple.

“Yup! And you’re one of us now,” she beams, picking up the forgotten napkins and wiping the jelly on his face for him. “You get to be a weirdo forever now.”

“Oh boy,” he breathes, but his voice is soft and without a hint of the bite it used to have. “Hey, Shouyou’s back.”

Yachi looks up as Hinata makes his way across the park to where they’re sitting, an indignant look on his face. When he gets to the blanket he plops down with a huff, taking up Kageyama’s abandoned spot with his head in Yachi’s lap.

“What happened?” Kageyama asks, confusion crossing his face again as he tries to bite into the apple core and Yachi quietly takes it from him.

“They suspended us for a month,” he answers, crossing his arms over his chest.

Once the firefighters had arrived the day before the school was half destroyed and the teacher’s had began to send student’s home, but before the four of them could sneak away Miss Kiyoko caught up with them saying that Hinata and Terushima were to meet her and the principal this morning to receive their punishments. None of them had been very worried about it though; with everyone focusing on the mysterious intruder who had locked everyone in the cafeteria before disappearing they were sure the fire incident would be mostly swept under the rug. Apparently they were wrong.

“That’s not too bad,” Yachi says, trying to comfort Hinata and absentmindedly playing with his hair splayed on her thigh. “It could’ve been worse.”

“Okay, let me rephrase that,” Hinata sighs, throwing an arm over his eyes dramatically. “They _only_ suspended us for a month.”

“You… _want_ to be in more trouble?” Kageyama asks, rifling through Yachi’s bag for more snacks.

“Yeah! Think about it! If they gave me a month and a half I could miss the college entrance exams.”

“Shouyou,” Yachi says tentatively. “You know you aren’t exempt from any work you miss while you’re suspended, right? You still have to do it all.”

“What!?” Hinata yells, pulling his arm back and looking up at her like someone who just found out Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father. “All of it? You mean it’s not just a month of nothing?”

“No, of course not,” she giggles, unable to stop herself. “How would that be a punishment?”

“I don’t know. Because it would get boring? I  wouldn’t see my friends? I don’t understand teacher logic, Hitoka.”

“There are a lot of things you don’t understand,” Kageyama quips. Hinata pathetically tries to kick him without moving too much but Kageyama dodges easily.

“Shut up, you can’t even do math,” he mumbles when his foot doesn’t connect.

“Neither can you! Who needs math anyway?”

The boys argue back and forth as Yachi takes her bag back from next to Kageyama, remembering something she wanted to show them. She moves aside the empty plastic bags and apple core Kageyama dropped inside and pulls out a stack of papers.

“Speaking of not knowing math, I found these for you,” she says, dropping the papers in front of Kageyama.

He lifts them up, eyebrows scrunching together as he reads the title and Hinata looks up at him curiously. “New Student Registration?”

“Yeah! I found these files using Mr. Takeda’s account on the school website. You can’t just hide out in Shouyou’s bedroom forever, right? It’ll be hard but I was thinking you can finish the school year and graduate with us. I can make you a fake transcript from a different school and everything,” Yachi explains, losing steam as she doesn’t see a response on either boy’s face.

“Faking a transcript? Stealing government paperwork? Who are you and what did you do with Yachi Hitoka?” Hinata asks, sitting up and taking the papers from Kageyama. “Wow these are actually legit.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Yachi huffs, pushing away the guilt she’d already been feeling. “I just thought you might as well since we already told Miss Kiyoko you were transferring.”

“Won’t I need like, a place to stay or fake parents or something? This might be harder to pull off than you think,” Kageyama says, trying to hide the disappointment in his voice.

“What if you stay with me?” Hinata asks, cocking his head to the side.

“What?”

“We can fill out these forms and tell my mom you’re an exchange student or something so she’ll sign them. She loves having people stay with us and she probably won’t ask too many questions,” he continues, gaining excitement with every word. “It’s only for the rest of the year, right? I think it’ll work!”

“That’s actually not a bad idea,” Yachi nods, imagining how delighted Mrs. Hinata would be to have an extended house guest. “What do you think?”

Kageyama doesn’t seem convinced, but when he sees the poorly hidden excitement on Hinata and Yachi’s faces a small smile starts to peek at the corner of his lips. “Alright, yeah. Let’s try it.”

“Yes!” Hinata yells, punching the air. “It’ll be great! You’ll get to do homework, and take exams, and you won’t be able to sleep in class anymore because you’ll be visible, and-,”

“Never mind I don’t want to do it,” Kageyama deadpans, cutting Hinata off who glares in response.

“Oh, stop it, both of you,” Yachi chides, taking the papers from Hinata and gently smacking them against both of the boys’ foreheads. “It’ll be fun.”

“School is never fun, Hitoka,” Hinata argues, shaking his head.

“Shouyou, you aren’t helping,” she sighs, flipping through the pages she’s already read through multiple times and pulling out a pen.

Kageyama scoots closer to Yachi, setting his chin on her shoulder to read the forms with her.

“Okay, this first page I super easy so let’s start with that. What’s your first name?”

“Kageyama.”

Yachi and Hinata turn to look at him and he pulls away as the movement under his chin startles him.

“Your _first_ name is Kageyama? Then what’s your last name?” Hinata asks, putting both hands on his knees and sitting forward.

“Kageyama.”

“Your name is…Kageyama Kageyama,” Yachi says, more a confused statement than a question.

“No,” he replies, shaking his head as if he’s making himself clear as day.  “Just one. It’s just Kageyama.”

“You don’t have a first name?” Yachi asks, finding it odd that neither she nor Hinata had ever thought to ask him for it before. Kageyama shakes his head in answer.

“Well the papers say you need one, and Kageyama Kageyama isn’t going to work, so looks like we have to make one up,” Hinata tells him, a smirk ghosting across his face.

 “How does it say that?” Kageyama asks, squinting at the paper and searching for instructions.

“Right here,” he says, pointing at the asterisk next to the ‘first name’ box. “That means it’s required.”

“What is that blip thing? It’s so small how can it mean something? That blip can’t tell me what to do.”

“Well, it kind of can,” Yachi says gently, trying to stop the argument before it can start. “So what do you want your name to be?”

“I don’t really-,”

“How about Shinji?” Hinata asks, reading from some list he has open on his phone.

“No,”

“Rin?”

“No,”

“Hikaru-,”

“Shouyou, stop trying to name him after an anime character! What’s next? Naruto?” Yachi snaps, rubbing at her temples.

“It was on the list,” Hinata shrugs, making her groan.

Yachi pulls out her phone and looks up a list of name meanings, searching for one that stands out to her as Hinata keeps naming off random protagonist names to an increasingly annoyed Kageyama.

“How about this one,” she interrupts them just as Kageyama turns down the name ‘Kamina’. “Tooru. It means ‘to go through’, like you came through the dimensions.”

Kageyama’s face blanches, his hand curling into the edge of the blanket. Hinata looks up, eyebrows furrowing at his pallor.

“Hey, are you okay?” He asks, reaching forward to cover Kageyama’s fist with his hand.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he fake smiles, tension slowly leaving his shoulders. “What else is on the list?”

“Ummm,” Yachi hums, leaving the situation alone as she peers at the list. She doesn’t want to push Kageyama about something if he isn’t ready to talk about it. Someday, though, she hopes.

“How about Tobio? It means ‘flying hero’,” she reads, looking up at the boys, smiling at the way the name feels on her tongue.

“Ooh, I like it!” Hinata yells, eyes lighting up like candle flames as he turns to Kageyama. “What do you think?”

“I can’t fly,” Kageyama deadpans.

“But you _are_ a hero,” Hinata beams, practically glowing with excitement. “One for two isn’t bad.”

Yachi resists the urge to point out that score is technically failing.

“Alright, yeah. Tobio it is,” he nods, tasting the name the same as Yachi had. “Kageyama Tobio.”

“That’s a really cute name for a big scary demon,” Yachi giggles, writing the name neatly in the box.

“Big scary _human_ ,” Hinata corrects her, laughing too and earning a shove on the shoulder from Kageyama.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kageyama mutters, trying to seem grumpy but unable to hide the smile on his face. “Shut up.”

 The trio fills out most of the papers, skipping over the parts with the more complicated answers or the spaces that would need other documents. By the time she reaches the last page Yachi’s eyes are straining so she sets the packet aside and stretches, finding Hinata and Kageyama both dozing on her lap again, a head on each thigh.

She looks down and smiles, loving the way their hair mingles where their heads touch, flames and darkness swirling together. Careful not to disturb them she lays back on the blanket, staring up at the clear blue afternoon sky.

Clouds blow slowly across the sky, changing shape by the second, and in that moment she feels whole, like everything she needs in life is there with her, breathing softly against her skin.

Lying there is like being in a warm bubble, the three of them separated from the world and content to stay in their own pocket of happiness. She isn’t sure how things will work out, or if their plans will succeed or fail, but for the time being life is perfect, and she couldn’t be happier.


End file.
